After a year that threatened to engulf the automobile business in a bruising contraction in world trade and most Western economies, manufacturers have arrived at the Frankfurt auto show more eager to sell cars than spread apocalyptic warnings.

From compacts for the frugal to superpremium vehicles for the fabulous, the companies have new models to offer — some of them electric — and the world of auto enthusiasts is lapping them up as the industry begins to shake off the all-crisis, all-the-time attitude of the last year.

“You’re talking more about products,” Carlos Ghosn, chief executive of Renault, said on Tuesday, the first day the show was open to journalists. “We are happy.”

As with so much in the post-Lehman Brothers world, the Frankfurt auto show is a more modest affair this year, with fewer companies displaying their wares across less floor space.

Instead of the 1,046 companies at the biennial show’s previous outing in 2007, there are 753 this year. That may reflect the industry’s state of mind: 12 months after the Lehman debacle, things are less bad than expected and better than could be reasonably hoped for.

Ghosn said that Renault, which controls the Japanese automaker Nissan, expected worldwide auto sales to reach 59 million units in 2009. The good news, he said, is that at the beginning of the year, he expected it to be 55 million.

That bright spot masks different developments in different parts of the world, Ghosn and others said. The United States market is beginning to bounce back after a terrible 12 months, while China is firmly in recovery mode.