Would you buy a DS? Do you even know what a DS is? No, not a classic Citroën DS – a modern-day DS, the brand pitched as Citroën and Peugeot’s premium arm.
The chances are the answer to both questions is in the negative. Last year DS sold only 2,403 cars in the UK – down from the 3,674 it sold the year before, itself a fairly meagre figure.
To put those numbers in context, Audi, the brand that DS is pitched against, sold 137,000. Volvo sold more than 50,000 cars last year, while even Jaguar, a brand considered by many to be in trouble, sold 14,000.
These are not the numbers with which DS would wish to celebrate its 10th birthday. Instead, those in charge would like you to look at their spangly new concept car – the SM Tribute – and not think about the sales charts.
As its name suggests, the SM Tribute is heavily influenced by the Citroën SM, a car that’s taken on near-mythical status as the most desirable Citroën has ever produced; arguably, the most desirable French car ever made.
I joined DS at its unveiling, at the Chantilly Arts et Elegance show at the Château de Chantilly to ask what it means for the future of DS – and whether the brand is doing enough to secure its future. I discovered that it may yet emerge from the shadows – and that the SM Tribute is just the start.
The present: the DS conundrum
I drove to the show in one of DS’s current products. It’s called the 7, and while not a bad car, it’s emblematic of the brand’s problems.
When, in 2014, Citroën’s DS3 and DS5 were hived off to become a marque all of their own, the idea was to turn DS into a glossy luxury brand rich with Parisian glamour, the Louis Vuitton of cars.
Since then, the brand has struggled to gain traction. The problem is that to be believable, to be taken seriously, DS’s cars needed to feel as special, as lavish and as indisputably high-end as Louis Vuitton bags.
Yet the 7 is based on the same platform as the Vauxhall Grandland and Peugeot 3008, with the same plug-in hybrid powertrain used in the former. This means it drives in much the same way.
As Audi has shown, you can get away with using mainstream underpinnings (in this case VW) to make a premium-branded car. But for it to work, you need to ensure the bits you see and touch feel special; they need to be tangibly different to the mainstream models on which they’re based.
In the DS 7 you’ll find switchgear, plastics and (reskinned, but still fundamentally the same) infotainment software that look and feel like they come from a Citroën – which, of course, they do.
You can argue, of course, that you’d never notice if you’ve never been in a Citroën. But equally, Citroën is fast becoming a value-centric budget brand – and when buyers are comparing these things with the level of finish of a Volvo or an Audi, they’ll notice that the DS feels significantly downmarket.
Yes, there are snazzy multi-faceted window switches with flashes of brushed stainless steel; a BRM chronograph swivels out of the dashboard when you start the engine, while there are chrome-effect accents and lashings of faux suede. But to succeed, a new premium brand needs to surpass its buyers’s expectations, to really turn heads and win them away from the usual suspects. Look how long it took Lexus – and how much money has needed to be invested in Volvo.
DS has had 10 years, but it hasn’t had access to the resources it really needed to create cars that embody that “Louis Vuitton”’ ideal.
The past: DS leads to SM
It’s worth noting that the original Citroën DS, after which the new brand is named, was not the Louis Vuitton of cars either. It wasn’t design or luxury that set the DS apart – though they were undoubtedly part of its appeal. No, what made the DS an icon was its radical, forward-thinking technology.
The feature for which it has become best-known was its hydropneumatic suspension system; a clever engineering-led solution to several problems at once – not only delivering incomparable comfort, but bringing with it power-assisted steering, anti-dive brakes and load-compensating self-levelling.
Naturally, this avant-garde attitude to engineering had its downsides: it terrified garages and in the end it bankrupted Citroën.
Even today, owning a DS is not for the faint-hearted. I speak from experience. You might say I have more than a passing interest in the future of a badge to which I have a particular attachement.
My own D Special is a rough example that’s spent months off the road and mere days on it during my almost two-year ownership; a gamble that became a rolling restoration – that’s putting it diplomatically.
Despite all this, I can’t tear my eyes from it. In its day, so ethereal, so unique was the DS that even philosophers wrote essays about it in hallowed terms. Roland Barthes described the DS as having “fallen from the sky inasmuch as it appears at first sight as a superlative object”. Who could disagree?
It was the epochal DS that spawned the SM; a truly luxurious grand tourer that grew from a project to create a six-cylinder haut-de-gamme version. That’s why today’s DS brand feels it can lay claim to the SM, despite that car never having worn a DS badge.
“For us, the DS and the SM are the same story,” says Thierry Métroz, DS’s director of design. “Because, as you know, the platform, the technical content of the SM was the same as the DS. Same platform, the same engineers on the platform. The technology was quite the same.”
The future: the SM reborn
In the flesh, the SM Tribute is breathtaking – a long, low coupé that apes the lines of the original yet brings them up to date. “Our brief with this project was not to do retro design, but to take the design of the original one and try just to modernise a little bit,” says Métroz.
“I said to my designers, try to imagine if in 1975 we don’t stop [making] the SM, we continue through three, four cycles or something. And now what is the result of this evolution?
Evolution of trends but also evolution of the new technology platform and so on.”
The nose is pure SM, the LED headlights divided into the same six chambers, behind glass screens. The profile suffers a little from the large size of the wheels, which spoil the proportions somewhat, visually shortening the car. The effect is particularly noticeable when the two are viewed nose-to-nose.
But the surfacing, the shapes of the glasshouse and the way the gold section of the bodywork gently peels away at its trailing edge are delicious. The covered rear wheels – a reference to the original – provide the same retro-futuristic air they did on the earlier car.
At the rear, Métroz and his team have drawn the most obvious line between that car and this, with a huge, convex rear screen that wraps around the fastback tail – something of a trademark of Robert Opron, the designer of the original.
Reviving DS as a model, not simply the brand name
Taken as a whole it’s arresting and spectacular. But… so what? Isn’t this so much vapourware? It surely means very little if DS is simply going to keep producing more anonymous SUVs with shiny bits.
I put this to Métroz. I expect him to grimace, to huff, perhaps even to be hurt at my dismissal of the marque’s current output. Instead, he grins. “Within three, four years,” he says, “we will appear on the market, a production car, with much more design inspiration – of this car, and also the DS.”
Then he looks around conspiratorially, adding in a low voice: “Also, a secret: we are doing exactly the same as the SM Tribute, but inspired by the DS. We have both in the studio; it’s a project to discuss with Carlos [Tavares, Stellantis’s CEO] about the future of our design strategy. It’s validated. It’s OK now with Carlos. Now we are just working on the execution of our strategy – developing the strategy on production for the market.
“As you know, we want to lower our cars, we want to have less ground clearance. I love SUVs because we did the DS 7, but personally I’m pushing a lot to have no more SUVs for DS. It’s my vision. The customers, they want SUVs, OK, but we are the Stellantis group. We have lots of SUVs. Maybe DS can do something different.
“What I would like to do is to have the link with the original DS, but feasible on the different silhouettes and feasible on different sizes of car. Not only one car, but a complete range. And of course as part of this line-up, we’re pushing to have a car with the same proportion, a super low, very elegant, long car.”
Daring to be different
If Métroz has his way, then, DS’s future range could be the very antithesis of most other manufacturers (and indeed, of the marque’s current portfolio); a range exclusively of long, low luxury cars that take inspiration from the DS and SM.
But, of course, Métroz isn’t the man making the decisions at the top of the company. And Tavares, the man who is, has never had much truck with heritage. Will he get on board?
“Actually, if we want to do the car, everything is ready,” says Métroz. “We have just to push the button. The SM Tribute uses an existing Stellantis platform. The shape of the windscreen comes from a current Stellantis model. Everything is feasible. We can do the car in terms of engineering and everything.
“But it’s the first step today. We have to say, ‘how is the reaction of the public?’ If everybody loves the car, I want it. Maybe we can imagine to continue the story. We have just to demonstrate that the business model is OK.
“Carlos is like that. He says, OK, I love the design. It’s good. Now if you have a good business plan, we can go. That’s what we need.”
Why heritage matters
Will it be what buyers want, though? Métroz believes so. He says that Stellantis is coming round to the idea that heritage and history may be a useful tool to define its brands and give them an appeal that the rising tide of cheaper Chinese rivals can’t match.
“Something they can’t buy is the history of the brand,’ says Métroz. “The storytelling of a brand. I think the customer, they’re really attached to the storytelling, the link with history, all these emotional things. You have no emotion with the Chinese car. It’s good technology, it’s a good daily use and everything, good price – but no emotion. Our strong point for all the European brands is our history, and the customer, they want something like that.”
But with only 10 years as a standalone brand, does DS have enough of a story to tell, enough of an emotional pull?Historically, French luxury cars have always struggled, especially in the British market.
Métroz’s plan is to evoke cars that, design icons though they may be, will only be remembered by older buyers. Will younger buyers know or care about the history of French luxury cars – and just how much of a pull will that exert when compared with the instant recognition of four interlocking rings, a three-pointed star or a blue propellor on the grille? It’s a big ask.
The Telegraph verdict
For all of Métroz’s passion and excitement, then, this is a brand whose future still hangs in the balance. DS can evoke cars like the SM and its namesake all it wants, but it will need to back up that design flair with a lavish, thick-set sense of luxury that’s more than just skin-deep – or the sort of advanced engineering that set its namesake apart from the crowd.
It will need to actively draw buyers away from the usual German suspects by feeling at least as high-end and special as they do, if not more so. It’ll all be for naught if what we get is a pastiche that feels too similar to the Peugeot or Citroën it will inevitably be based on.
The SM Tribute is, as Métroz says, a promising first step. And as a wide-eyed enthusiast, it’s incredibly exciting to hear that DS wants to build another DS. But if it is to succeed, there’s still a great deal of work yet to do.
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