Champions of Design
Case studies
Citroën
Name a car that epitomises French style. How about the Citroën 2CV? Or the DS? To create a vehicle that defines a national character is quite something. To do so a second time, from the opposite end of the market, is a remarkable achievement.
As designers, we regularly glean the germ of our most successful ideas from the subtext in the brief. The 2CV, for example, took its inspiration from the desire to ‘provide the peasantry with a motorised alternative to the horse, capable of transporting a tray of eggs over cobbled roads’. The resulting suspension had the travel of a coil-spring mattress.
The aerodynamic DS, conceived in secret during the latter years of the German occupation, was deliberately designed to reassert French pride and became so closely associated with De Gaulle it might have been created for him.
Sadly, however, the story of Citroën has not always been so happy. With weak cost management, its Avant Garde designs necessitated high prices, and after the market weakened due to the 1973 oil crisis, the company went under. Rescued by Peugeot, Citroën was led to pursue diluted designs built on shared components. However, mass mediocrity is ultimately unsustainable without cost-leadership, and we should draw inspiration from Citroën's recent success in commanding higher prices following its return to more progressive design with its new-look DS range.
