Speaking to Top Gear Magazine, the automaker’s CEO, Linda Jackson, said while the Saint-Ouen-sur-Seine company is known to “frequently revisit the past”, I’m not going to produce a new 2CV”.
“[The 2CV] had its time, it was right, but it’s about finding out the next design that’ll be right for the customer. We evolve our designs by looking at the past, but what I don’t want to do is become a manufacturer that produces retro,” Jackson said.
“When I started at the company we took all the teams to our Conservatoire. We sent them off and told them to come back and tell us what is ‘Citroën’. They came back with the chevrons, the roundedness of design, and then they noticed through time that the designs sort of evolve and you see them moving from one time to the next, particularly around lighting structures. Next year, when we launch another vehicle, we’ll evolve our lighting signature again”.
According to Jackson, the brand’s evolution will not solely rely on past products, as the need to think of new innovations resonates more with what the company is moving towards.
“I think you need to be continually thinking innovatively. If you go back to what you did before? Okay, it was successful then, but I think people want newness. People want something different, but you need to keep coherence. If I go back to 2014 when I started we made some great cars, but there was no coherence. You wouldn’t have known it was a family,” she said.
In a subsequent interview with the publication, Product Director, Xavier Peugeot, said the C4 Cactus will be dropped completely when the current models reaches the end of its lifecyclewith no replacement being planned.
“I joined Citroën a few months after the launch of the first C4 Cactus. It is a tremendous project, as it is in line with the Citroën values of demonstrating boldness and innovation and trying to consider cars in a different way. What we tried to do for the mid-life update of the car is keep this spirit alive, but to make it even more involved inside the range,” Peugeot said.
“So for the time being this car is our C-segment hatch offer. Our next C-segment car to come will replace the C4 Cactus. This will be the end of the Cactus. For the name, I don’t know yet, but for the car, yes”.
Peugeot however quelled suggestions that the next C4 would not have the ability to rival the quirkiness of the Cactus, saying that, “We have made some choices which will definitely remain coherent with what Citroën stands for. The capacity to dare, the capacity to push the standards further than others do. To make cars which are not classical.
“I’m looking for polarised results in customer clinics. You would say I’m mad, but I do not expect people to only love the car. I would like a slightly higher proportion of people being unsure. Citroëns have never been ‘the consensus way’; you have to generate this level of polarisation, to make things differently, to create some ‘what have they created again?’ stories. That’s what makes a successful Citroën”.
Despite recent local reports claiming that Citroën could re-enter South Africa after departing the local market three years ago due to sliding sales, no details from parent company PSA have yet been made.
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