* Emerging markets fuel hopes as European market stagnates
* Volkswagen more optimistic on global market this year
* Ford sees potential threat from austerity measures
* Volkswagen chairman casts eye on Fiat's Alfa Romeo brand
* Infiniti talks to Daimler about sharing Mercedes platform
(Adds quotes from executives)
By Christiaan Hetzner and Helen Massy-Beresford
PARIS, Sept 30 (Reuters) - Top carmakers let cautious optimism creep into their outlooks at the Paris Auto Show on Thursday, looking to emerging markets to dispel the dark clouds over western economies.
"This is the first auto show that looks beyond the crisis. Carmakers' attitude has changed. We see a slightly rosier future but it's too early to open champagne bottles," Fiat's chief executive Sergio Marchionne said.
Marchionne said the Italian carmaker now expected to report a net profit this year as good sales in Latin America this month helped offset weaknesses in Italy and elsewhere in Europe.
Carmakers also showcased electric vehicles in Paris, as many prepare to launch the cars in Europe in the coming months.
Carlos Ghosn, CEO of both Renault and Nissan which are jointly investing 4 billion euros in electric cars, said he saw as conservative his prediction they would account for 10 percent of new car sales by 2020.
Saab-owner Spyker's Chief Executive Victor Muller said the success of electric cars was still uncertain and depended on progress with such factors as installing a charging infrastructure and battery technology.
Nevertheless Saab is building 70 e-power cars for tests. "There are so many questions still with electric cars but this is our way of testing the waters," Muller said.
MORE MARKET OPTIMISM
Volkswagen AG also has turned slightly more optimistic, the sales chief for Europe's biggest carmaker told reporters, forecasting the global car market will grow by 6-7 percent this year, more than the 5 percent he had seen before.
"There are still risks but we increasingly see more reason to view developments more positively than before," Christian Klingler said as Europe's top auto show this year kicked off.
Ghosn said Europe's car market could fall 2 percent next year, adding: "Growth of 3 to 4 percent globally (in 2011) would be completely reasonable".
Automakers in Europe have been braced for pain as the cash-for-clunkers buyer incentive schemes that many countries introduced to spur demand during the financial crisis expire and public spending cuts loom to cut government deficits.
"We are probably in for a slow continued recovery around all markets. But there will probably be some austerity measures in some countries that will change that outlook," Ford of Europe's chairman and chief executive Stephen Odell told reporters.
And Hyundai Europe vice president Allan Rushforth told Reuters he stuck with his earlier prediction -- "one of the more pessismistic (among carmakers)" that it would be 2014 before Europe's car market returned to 2007, pre-crisis levels.
Other executives have forecast a return by 2013.
CHINA RULES
Instead carmakers are counting on brisk growth in emerging markets such as Brazil, China, and India to take up the slack.
"It is no news that the first place is China for most of us, definitely for Mercedes, but it does not stop there," Daimler's chief executive Dieter Zetsche told Reuters Insider.
"Within the BRIC countries certainly Russia is taking up again, Brazil -- in the volume segment more than the premium segment -- is growing very fast, meanwhile overtaking Germany as a car market. And we have as well in India good sales rises."
PSA Peugeot Citroen's chief executive Philippe Varin took a similar line. "In emerging countries we are going to see continuing growth. In Europe we think 2010 is a low point, so 2011 should be higher or equal to 2010. We do not see huge growth in 2011 on the horizon," he said.
Colin Dodge, Nissan's executive vice president and chairman for Africa, Middle East, India and Europe said carmakers with good global coverage would have their biggest year yet.
"Russia is back and booming, India is accelerating and the growth rate in China is nearly uncatchable," he said.
VW's premium brand Audi expects to sell more than 300,000 cars a year in China as early as 2012 and in 2013 at the latest, it said, adding it planned to expand production capacity there with partner FAW Group in the medium term.
Booming demand in China also helped German sports car maker Porsche AG post record revenues.
In contrast GM's Opel division said the western European car market had hit bottom but would stay depressed in 2011. (Additional reporting by David Bailey, Danilo Masoni, Stefano Rebaudo, Gilles Guillaume and James Regan, Writing by Michael Shields; Editing by Hans Peter, Greg Mahlich)