2014 Citroen DS5 – Driven To Write

Lighting Out For the Territories

Sometimes it’s hard to ask for directions. The latest in a torrent of PSA news stories looks at to the carmaker’s underperforming DS brand, which has some troubling news to impart.

Earlier this week, Autocar reported that PSA’s prestige DS brand has discontinued both the slow-selling DS4 and even slower selling DS5 models. With combined sales of 17,484 for both car lines last year (a mere 5738 of which were the larger DS5), few will mourn their passing. However, should this fill you with a hitherto unrequited urge to Continue reading “Lighting Out For the Territories”

DS – The Final Frontier (Revisited)

A lot can happen in two years, and since we’re examining the fortunes of PSA’s Distinctive Series, it might be useful to revisit this piece from Driven to Write’s early days to see what we thought then.

A study in pointlessness – the DS4. Image via citroen.md

Is Citroën’s ‘Distinctive Series’ the final frontier for the legendary French automaker? [First published 16 January 2014].

Lately, France’s PSA group became the automotive Blanche DuBois – lurching with mounting desperation from one apparent suitor to another following the collapse of their core market. Yet amidst the gloom, a hitherto unimaginable success story seems to have unfolded, involving the marque most analysts had written off as beyond saving. Could Citroën, PSA’s trouble child since 1976, belatedly, and against all odds, find itself at the forefront of a marketing coup?

Continue reading “DS – The Final Frontier (Revisited)”

PSA’s Tale of Two Continents

Peugeot/Citroën’s European D-sector sales collapse is not the catastrophe it first appears.

2015 DS5 - image via car24news — 2015 DS5 – image via car24news

As we know, the motor industry is riven with contradiction, but nevertheless, some things remain beyond debate. Take the fact that the European mid-sized saloon market has been in serious and (some say) terminal decline since 2007, with sales across the sector falling by half. Yet, with Europe-wide volumes of almost half a million cars last year, there still remains a good deal to play for in what’s left of the segment. This month, PSA Groupe have posted their first profits in three years on the back of vast and painful cost-cutting including the axing of unprofitable models. So today we ask where this hollowing out has left PSA’s mid-sized saloon offerings? Continue reading “PSA’s Tale of Two Continents”

Theme : Concepts – Armchair Motorshow : DS Divine

What is to be made of the DS Divine concept car? Is it a Good Thing that PSA now has Peugeot, Citroen and the DS brands to manage?

As we know, PSA has decided, in its wisdom, to divide its efforts no longer in two, but three. From hereon in (or, at least until PSA has gone to the hereafter), the Sino-French giant will furnish the market with Peugeots, Citroens and DSs (the latter to be shorn of the Citroen moniker sometime next year, in the UK at least, so it is reported). Continue reading “Theme : Concepts – Armchair Motorshow : DS Divine”