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PSA Peugeot Citroen CEO Philippe Varin addresses the media on Wednesday, March 7, 2012 during the press preview days at the 82nd Geneva International Motor Show in Geneva, Switzerland.The Motor Show will open it's doors to public from 8th to the 18th of March presenting more than 260 exhibitors and more than 180 world...

Frank Augstein, Associated Press

GENEVA Alliances are the buzz word of European automakers' struggle for survival.

PSA Peugeot-Citroen chairman Philippe Varin said Tuesday at the Geneva Motor Show that a new alliance with General Motors will allow the French automaker to return to long-term profitability in Europe.

There is hardly a potential ally that Fiat and Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne will rule out.

"We are open to everything," Marchionne said, even as the fresh GM-Peugeot alliance complicates Fiat's search for potential new partners.

While alliances have been around for a while some more successful than others the brutal European car market characterized by plummeting sales, idled factories and fierce competition is pushing many automakers to look for partners for new technology and access to fresh markets without reinventing the wheel.

"This requires more and more investment that nobody can do except through acquisitions and alliances," said Carlos Ghosn, head of the 13-year-old Nissan and Renault alliance. "If Nissan were alone and Renault were alone there were many things we could not do."

Targeted alliances are driven by the logic that a good four-cylinder engine is a good four-cylinder no matter who builds it, and no driver cares about what platform the car is on. Only when it comes to more powerful engines, does brand identity come into play. Maserati and Ferrari, for example, strictly restrict their powertrain technologies to those brands.

The Peugeot-GM alliance is somewhat broader. GM becomes the French automaker's second-largest shareholder with a 7-percent stake, behind the Peugeot family, whose stake drops from 31 percent to around 25 percent.

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Alliances the buzz word for Europe auto survival