PARIS (AP) — At the Paris auto show, the car market's fortunes appear to come down to three C's: clean, cheap and China.

The world's most-visited and oldest car show offered a sneak peak to the media yesterday, with automakers presenting their new product aimed at tapping a badly awaited rebound after two years of global recession doused their industry.

With things tight for many consumers, companies are pushing smaller, less expensive cars.

But economics hasn't been all: Environmental concerns have become paramount too. Many countries are demanding cleaner cars, and automakers have to balance that obligation with consumer tastes and cost constraints.

Hybrids and other fuel-efficient, lower-emission vehicles took front seat as CEOs and other top executives strolled out onto well-lit stages to trumpet their engineering innovations and long-term strategies.

Hope springs eternal at auto shows, and some say the market is finally looking up.

"Certainly it is more optimistic because we've had a couple of terrible years with the global recession," said market analyst Rebecca Lindland, of IHS Automotive. "We are seeing a lot of pent-up demand being created as the recession continues."

While other economies lagged, China has displayed an imperturbably booming economy, pulling ahead of the United States as the world's biggest car market — "and they are not going to get off that title anytime soon," Lindland said. She estimated that about 10 percent of Chinese have driver's licences, meaning the upside market potential remains huge.

Ian Robertson, BMW's sales and marketing chief, said the German company expects to top its forecast to sell 120,000 cars in China this year. Peugeot will make a third of its new 508 sedans in China, with targeted sales in its first year of 200,000, said PSA Peugeot-Citroen CEO Philippe Varin. Ferrari sold 250 cars in China and aims to increase sales to 500, chairman Luca Cordero de Montezemolo said.

The two-week show brings together 306 companies — including manufacturers, suppliers and other industry participants — from 20 nations. Notably, high-potential markets like China and India aren't among them.

One novelty at this Paris show compared to the last one in 2008 is so-called so-called "micro-cars" — two-seater city vehicles that are all the rage in Asia, said Sarwant Singh, a automotive market analyst at Frost & Sullivan.

Peugeot's BB1 concept, Nissan's Land Glider and the Renault Twizy are among these half-car/half-motorcycle contraptions on the forefront of the trend, Singh said.

"They're basically smaller Smarts," Singh said, referring to Daimler's get-around-town vehicle. The trend is being driven by urbanisation, and it's moving from Asia to Europe. Frost & Sullivan forecasts sales of these micro-cars to grow to up to 500,000 by 2016, up from only 30,000 last year.

On the green front, the agency also predicts that "alternative fuel" cars, which includes electrics, hybrids and others, will grow to up to 30 percent of the overall car market by 2020, up from under 10 percent today. Electrics will account for seven percent of the market by 2020, its forecasters say.