French Citroën sub-brand DS has some lofty ambitions. “The mission is to become a luxury brand,” Designer Director Thierry Métroz recently told Autocar.
Building DS into a rival to the likes of Rolls-Royce and Bentley will be “a very difficult job, because the brand was born in 2014 and it may take 10, 20 years or more to change its positioning,” he admitted, but that’s the goal nonetheless.
The company’s new electric No. 8 SUV already borrows ideas from Bentley in its choice and execution of interior materials, he said, while its advanced aerodynamics give it a claimed range of up to 469 miles, which is a luxury offered by few EVs.
If DS really is to go even further upmarket using its Stellantis family underpinnings it will have to keep pushing its design and materials choices. In a dream scenario DS would become “the Louis Vuitton of the automotive industry,” said Métroz.
Although DS only became a standalone brand in 2014, in the heyday of the Citroën DS those two letters really did stand for automotive excellence. French presidents would only ride in DS models, while thanks to coachbuilder Henri Chapron the DS became one of the most coveted cars of the 1960s, and today Chapron’s Décapotable models sell for upwards of £200,000.
It is this glamorous history that Métroz is seeking to repeat. The first attempt could be a production version of the SM Tribute concept car that his team developed with Stellantis stablemate Maserati.
It might all be French fancy, but one can’t help but admire the ambition.
