“Citroen is back” – MD targets fleet growth with reinvigorated model range

While Citroen’s innovative Advanced Comfort Suspension has become an integral part of the manufacturer’s brand identity, there is also a renewed spring in the step of Citroen UK.

By the end of the year the brand will have a completely new or refreshed range, including an electric option on all models, with all vehicles featuring the OEM’s new design language.

This has led to the manufacturer declaring “Citroen is back” – both at its recent dealer conference and at last week’s media launch of the all-new C3 Aircross and refreshed C4 and C4X range.

These will go on sale this year and will be joined by the new C3 and e-C3 superminis, while an all-new C5 Aircross will be launched late summer.

“When we say we’re back, more than anything we are talking about the opportunity to re-establish Citroen’s position in the UK,” says Greg Taylor, managing director of Citroen UK.

“Citroen has got an incredible history and has been an incredibly innovative brand. It’s brought a lot of world firsts into the automotive industry, but ultimately the range we have been offering has aged.”

The outgoing C3, for example, was originally launched more than eight years ago, with the B-SUV C3 Aircross being on the road for seven years.

“We are now in a position which doesn’t really happen in the automotive industry where we have, in essence, the full passenger car line-up being refreshed in the space of 12 months,” says Taylor.

“We are now at the cutting-edge in terms of a design linearity that has not really existed before; because the development times of cars are so long it’s very rare to see within any automotive brand where you have all of the car line-up with the same design ethos running through it.”

Taylor says the manufacturer is also bringing innovation back. Citroen’s Advanced Comfort Suspension will be available in the brand’s B-SUV for the first time, for example, while battery-electric, hybrid and petrol powertrains will be available across the range.

“Ultimately, this gives us an opportunity to come to market with a full suite of cars, a full suite of powertrains, incredibly competitively priced and positioned in the market, with a really rich specification across the board,” he adds.

“We know we can deliver stronger market shares than we’ve been able to in the past couple of years.”

Last year, Citroen had a 1.56% overall market share in the UK, which was 0.07 percentage points lower than in 2023. Historically, its market share has been greater: in 2015, for example, it was 3.04%.

Fleet has important role for Citroen UK

Fleet will play an important role in the brand’s growth ambitions. At the C3/e-C3 launch last year, Rob Clark, head of product for Citroen UK, said the manufacturer expects 50% of registrations of the supermini to go into the fleet sector, while the new C3/e-C3 Aircross and revised C4/C4X ranges also create new opportunities.

The brand expects the fleet:retail split for C3 Aircross to be 57:43, and the C4 petrol and electric e-C4 models to be 48:52 and 54:46 respectively.

“The B-SUV segment – certainly in the UK – is the second biggest segment in the market and one of the benefits of the new C3 Aircross is that, size-wise, it sits smack bang in the middle of the B- and C-SUV segments,” says Taylor.

“This means we can draw down from the customer who has traditionally looked at slightly bigger SUVs, and pull up from those who have had smaller SUVs.

“The old C3 Aircross was more an MPV upstyled to an SUV, and the new C3 Aircross will enable us to go into channels where the previous car couldn’t really compete because it wasn’t what the customer necessarily demanded.

“In salary sacrifice, for example, people want an SUV and the old C3 Aircross didn’t really offer them that, but the new model gives us that opportunity.

“Motability, obviously, is another huge part of the fleet market as well. The old car performed quite well in that area, but with the new C3 Aircross being more SUV, having more interior space and the option to have a seven-seat version, this gives us another opportunity that we didn’t have with the older car.

“It also gives us a strong opportunity from a corporate and true fleet perspective: the residual values are stronger and we’ve brought much more technology into the car that we had previously.”

Taylor says the breadth of the powertrain offering – particularly the availability of a manual gearbox – means the new models will also appeal to the rental market.

“The fact we offer a manual on C3 Aircross is something we really want to get in front of the rental companies from the outset, because there are a lot of people that have never driven an automatic car and having a manual is a strong opportunity as their presence in automotive reduces,” he adds.

“A benefit of our powertrain offering is that we have the options to compete across all the major fleet channels.

“Rental companies, for example, are slower to adopt battery electric than some of the other fleet channels.

“We think we will index more heavily in some of the other channels with battery electric and that affords us the opportunity to perhaps go to rental companies.

“Maybe they do need to take the ZEV mandate mix, but they won’t need to take more than that because we know that in salary sacrifice, for example, we are likely to over-index from a BEV perspective.”

Getting the new models in front of fleet customers is another priority. The manufacturer is currently planning some arrive-and-drive events with leasing companies and fleet customers to give them the opportunity to see and drive the new cars.

“We work hard at Citroen to provide a rich specification as well as a value proposition; not only are our cars priced very competitively, we are not compromising on specification either,” says Taylor.

“That’s what we want to get across to fleets and leasing companies: that you effectively can have your cake and eat it.”

ZEV Mandate obligations

Stellantis earlier this month announced it had met its 2024 ZEV Mandate obligations, and Taylor says it will do the same again this year despite the tougher demands.

“Obviously, all OEMs are in consultation with the Government in terms of where the ZEV Mandate is going to head, but one thing Stellantis has always been clear on is that we will meet our obligations under the directive that in place at the time,” he says.

“From a Citroen perspective, the benefit we have this year is that we have a full new line-up. We have battery electric options across that line-up and the opportunity for us to contribute to the overall Stellantis achievement is increased this year as a consequence.”