PSA-Opel — Safety in Numbers, But How Will it Look in 2027?
You may have gone to Geneva secretly wanting only to gawp at the Ferrari 812, McLaren 720S or Aston Martin Valkyrie. But to get to any of those you had to wade through an undercurrent of PSA-Opel takeover talk.
Although GM’s rationale for leaving Europe is clear, if almost shockingly brave, the benefits for PSA are much less clear, with huge model range overlap and the addition of a languishing Opel brand to a portfolio of French brands which struggle outside their native France.
The announcement confirming the deal was made on the eve of the first press day but was light on detail. None of the brands involved — Peugeot, Citroen, DS and Opel — made more than passing mentions of it in their show press conferences so it was interesting to see how they articulated themselves in the new context.
From left: Carlos Tavares, CEO of PSA Peugeot-Citroen; Karl-Thomas Neumann, CEO of Opel Group; and General Motors President Dan Ammann in Geneva.
As though to reassure analysts that PSA has the wherewithal to nurture Opel better than GM, CEO Carlos Tavares headlined with Peugeot’s financial performance. Opel seemed at pains to make the point that the brand has real value, reminding people that the company has a very long history and that, being German, offers precision engineering. It also made the unlikely claim that the PSA deal is one of equals.
Ironically, what the discarded Opel did have was a pair of completely new models — the upper-medium Insignia replacement and a new SUV, the Crossland X. They’re important cars. The Crossland X because it’s in the increasingly critical compact SUV/crossover segment and the Insignia because it’s in the upper-medium segment where Opel and its UK offshoot Vauxhall still have to be credible for business sales. Both look competitive. And we were told that they’re part of a tsunami of 29 new models in a four-year period. But how will that fit with PSA’s model plans? The two companies have already been collaborating, including on the Crossland, but significant rationalization will surely be essential. It’s a numbers game.
No doubt Carlos Tavares is a talented man, but you can’t help thinking that the additional scale Opel offers PSA is the opposite of the corporate nimbleness, lean product offering and crystal-clear brand thinking which gives Volvo and JLR such a great strategic opportunity in an industry facing inevitable and large-scale disruption over the next.
Only time will tell.
