The DS brand, which launched as the premium offshoot of Citroen in 2009, has never enjoyed much success. While some earlier concept cars showed promise, the brand seems to have drifted into irrelevance, which is a monumental shame. Perhaps it carries too much baggage?
The innovation, desirability and outright prestige of its 1955 forefather is certainly very difficult to replicate, but the collective notion is that the brand now sits on the sidelines, an afterthought that has never met the rather lofty expectations within the now broadened PSA Group.
“DS Aero Sport Lounge is a manifesto intended to illustrate the buzzword ‘sustainable’’ says Thierry Metroz, DS Automobiles’s design director. “It is a clear willingness to offer luxury while still thinking about our environmental footprint: the quality of sustainability. DS Aero Sport Lounge illustrates the opening of a new era for the car. An amazing pathway is opening for us to transform new limitations into opportunities to make cars that are more and more charismatic.”
“For this concept car, which is a prelude to our next creations, we have opted for solutions that are avant-garde and high technology in which the purely technical element is concealed for the benefit of the beauty. In the cockpit, we have chosen to work with unexpected materials, hand crafted with simple, pure lines, expressing a new kind of tranquility.”
The DS Aero Sport Lounge is yet another concept that makes one question what the DS brand’s USP is. Coupe SUVs are all the rage, especially in China – the market the DS brand was created to conquer. While Louis Vuitton bags have a cachet only the French fashion label can provide, what about the DS brand makes it desirable?
It has all the right ingredients: Technology? Check. Luxury? Check. Aerodynamics? Check. Yet aside from the sustainable straw marquetry used in the interior and a cotton insert in the IP abolishing large dark screens, the concept falls flat. Aesthetically it’s all a bit old hat. Been there, done that.
I want to see the DS brand succeed. I think it could have a good chance in the US market were it given proper marketing and network support. Tesla has proven you don’t need showrooms to sell a product to the masses, just something with a sprinkling of innovation, of desirability and future optimism. In my opinion, this isn’t it.
The sketches and renderings from the design team are brilliant, however.
