INCHCAPE To Show Us How To Sell Citroens?

French new car sales in August 2023

Citroen C3 – 12
Citroen C4 – 9
Citroen C5 Aircross – 3
Citroen C5 X – 5
Citroen Total – 29

Peugeot 2008 – 40
Peugeot 3008 – 46
Peugeot 308 – 28
Peugeot 408 – 4
Peugeot 5008 – 13
Peugeot 508 – 36
Peugeot Boxer – 3
Peugeot Expert – 43
Peugeot Partner – 62
Peugeot Total – 275

Renault Arkana – 259
Renault Captur – 27
Renault Kangoo – 0
Renault Koleos – 110
Renault Master – 200
Renault Master Bus – 0
Renault Megane – 11
Renault Megane E-Tech – 1
Renault Trafic – 60
Renault Total – 668
 
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Those numbers are saddening. How long can the double chevron brand exist in this marketplace with miserable volumes like that.
Those of us who are regarded as "rusted on" must be shaking our heads. Who to blame ??? There has historically been such a series of disastrous importers, even back to CX days ( not helped by the Fed's Button Plan that required licences to sell ) but since then the industrial/political landscape has changed. Hopefully a new distributor will engage with the OZ market. Renault did it with factory backing. We have seen an abundance of new Asian sourced brands become household names....and from their advertising locally have plenty of stock. Just out of interest I cruised the Tesla site. How many do you want ??
Stellantis appears to not exist in this part of the world.
Of course, locally ( Brisbane ) .. an Olympic city .. has no Citroen agent. Why have dealerships jumped ship ? Or have they had their concessions taken from them, as was the case a few years ago.
I have opined many times, IF only we could get some "officialdom" to attend events like The Grand Display of French Cars, and realise the level of brand loyalty/enthusiasm that remarkably still exists, maybe, just maybe, we would see an improvement in the presence in the marketplace.
The highlight of the day was seeing a Cactus in the traffic !
 
Peter,

We and Citroen are partly to blame.

Us "rusted on" Citroen people need to buy the new models new. But Citroen also need to bring in the models that we want to buy.

I'm afraid the age of diesels in passenger car scene seems is over as far as I can see because of their higher pollution levels and Adblue reliability problems, and the move to a zero emission future.

I am keen to buy a car with some sort of electric mobility capability for around town but there have been further delays in bringing in the C5X PHEV. Apparently everytime Citroen Australia try to put in an order for the PHEV version, Citroen France either say NO or reduce the size of the order. This maybe happens because Citroen are having problems meeting their part of the Stellantis EU CO2 limits etc. So I twould not like to be an importer of Euro cars into Australia at present.

The Queensland Dealers have been declining to sell Citroen because of the low number of sales does not provide enough finance for them to support an investment in staff and space needed to mount a sales effort. They are however able to provide a service capability because of the cross over with Peugeot. We just need to support the dealers we have locally.

Also because sales are so low, they cannot afford to advertise in the expensive media. Citroen Aust do advertise the cars through Facebook a lot but there needs to be more somehow. Any ideas?

Cheers, Ken
 
The problem of importing what people want to buy is an old one too. Think back to the pre modern terminology days. Europeans could get a C Zero, a C1, C2,C3,C4,C5,C6 and a people mover based on C5 bits called a C8. There was a C8 in Brisbane .. a private import from Ireland. We also had a few non official Cx Athena cars that were private imports too.
I recall one DS owner being unimpressed by the fact that no wagons were available.
I have to agree that volume is the answer, but a question of which comes first the chicken or the egg remains. To have a presence one has to BE a presence. In the local scene the Brisbane agency serviced all of QLD and the Northern Rivers of NSW. The rest of OZ was handled out of Sydney. The numbers in the mid 70s were not large, but a devoted clientele was established and remained. Heavens there was even a service centre in Bundaberg, and until these most recent importers in Toowoomba as well. When did I last see a new Fiat or Alfa on a local road ? I cannot recall ... years. Jeep seem to be doing some business, so not all of the Stellantis group are totally moribund.
 
Price. Volume. Marketing. Dealers. They are all stacked against Citroen; which is a pity because despite a decade of largely not very interesting product, their current product is good (if limited.)

The C3 is a great car. The C5 Aircross is a great car. The C5X is an excellent car. The C4 is a great car too.

But they can’t/won’t bring them here at a competitive price for marketing. Sure - the models we have are actually well featured for the price, so not totally uncompetitive similar specs in their field… but to get unconvinced people over the line, in the end it comes down to price.

Not a great dealer network? Yeah but if the car is cheaper they might be convinced. Not a great dealer network and a more expensive car than competition? Not an easy sell…

Marketing is important - I think the last big marketing push I saw on a Citroen was the campaign that had the C4 Grand Picasso associated with the Biggest Loser tv show. But you need income to have marketing, so it’s chicken and egg.

PSA sort of need to make a decision here.

I mean they can just keep muddling along with 30 sales a month and remain a nieche. They have done this for so long - I don’t know if it’s sustainable but it seems to have been sustainable enough for a fair while now, so maybe this is it.

Otherwise, I think they need to make a decision. Either leave the market (sad for all involved, but we’re competing with cheap Chinese cars now and the mantra of Toyota reliability…) or make a proper effort to renter the market.

This is going to involve having a couple of good models, and selling them cheap. The cars are good, if they can present a competitive price and get some on the roads, I think they can turn it around. Back it up with decent support in warranties etc. Lose money for a couple of years, but do it so as to get some product and reputation on the road. Then build from there. Once more cars are on the road the opportunity is there to rebuild the dealer and service network.

I really can’t think of anything else. No amount of marketing is going to achieve it (with money they don’t have.) They have to take their worthy product and get it into the hands of more Australians, which means taking the risk of selling them cheap for a bit.

People can be tempted to a left-field purchase by a good deal. In the end, $$ speak. Look at the Chinese makers - the Australian market has deep distrust of Chinese product, but $$ have spoken, to e cars undercut the market, and they are selling. People also distrust French product - but for the right $$ they will still fly out the door, and you can rebuild reputation from there.

Only other strategy I can think of is to capitalise on the “nieche” factor by going even more nieche - shifting entirely to electric, and painting themselves as a forward thinking, environmental choice, all electric models etc. There are waiting lists for electric cars still, it feels like a market opportunity that Citroen could capitalise on.

That’s my two cents.
 
Ken W said:
I am keen to buy a car with some sort of electric mobility capability for around town but there have been further delays in bringing in the C5X PHEV. Apparently everytime Citroen Australia try to put in an order for the PHEV version, Citroen France either say NO or reduce the size of the order. This maybe happens because Citroen are having problems meeting their part of the Stellantis EU CO2 limits etc. So I twould not like to be an importer of Euro cars into Australia at present.
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Citroën Australia have just pumped out another press release, saying the C5 X PHEV will arrive "H1 2024".

We shall see, I guess.

There will be one at this event, if you happen to be in the Great Ocean Road area this weekend, apparently.

In other news, 4 PHEV 408s have arrived in the country. Like the 508 from now on, only PHEV models will be for sale in Australia.
 
An electric citroen will not help anyone in the used car market. We'll have the sucke...... er, I mean "owners" buy them new..... coming off lease, who in there right mind would touch them with the longest barge pole in the universe. You think a Tesla battery is expensive, imagine trying to get a new battery for a citroen at ~ 5 years of age :eek:
 
Think about Skoda - in 2007 they were almost unknown, if anybody knew of them at all, it was in jokes about them.
Now look at Skoda in Australia.
Citroen and Peugeot could do the same.
My previous car was a Peugeot, bought in 2007 just before Skoda re-entered Australia.
When shopping for a new car in 2017 I looked at another Pug, but the cheapest wagon version of the 308 was over $40,000.
I ended up with a new Golf wagon with over $2000 worth of options/accesories, for under $30,000.
Peugeot and Citroen are trying to move upmarket to a higher price bracket, but the public aren't buying it.
Literally.
 
All of which adds to my belief that Stellantis need to get active. Consider the Spanish version of VW , SEAT were marketed here for a short time, now we get the Cupra badged vehicles. A new brand name and I have seen a few on the road already.
Long term, does it take greasing of palms to get the press onside ??? I recall how all German products are considered to be superior. The VW lived experience says otherwise, but the journos continue along the same line despite the problems. Everything French is quirky or weird .... yet the buyers of Europe consider a French product as a valid purchase.
 
Are you thinking of the journalists' "French electrics" which last time I looked were made by Monsieur Robert Bosch?

Or for the German side, the superior interior fittings, all then made by Herr Faurecia from Nanterre? (Recently merged with (=acquired) Hella - cars are international)
 
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All of the above. The international nature of vehicle parts can surprise us even now. Faurecia supplied Hyundai and Merecedes IIRC with interiors at one time. The starter in my C5 is a Mitsubishi product, yet the alternator is Valeo. Metzeler branding appears on the tailgate gasket.
Gone are the once familiar brand names of Ducellier and Paris Rhone. The C5's aircon may be a Behr product.
 
I have a list of C5 bits and bobs manufacturers. Most of them are German, but UK, Italy, USA and Japan are there. Oh, and a smallish group of French firms. French Faurecia did the comfortable seats on Bose frames.

PSA pressed the body panels. I wonder whose steel.
 
Interesting.
There was a time when you knew what you were getting.
Truly international in suppliers if not sales.
 
fritzelhund said:
Interesting.
There was a time when you knew what you were getting.
Truly international in suppliers if not sales.
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I think the point here is that journalists are generally unhelpful because journalists still operate in a world of sweeping generalisations.

ALL cars are international now - bits and pieces from France, Germany, Poland, Japan, Italy, America and undoubtedly China, etc etc.

But journalists tend towards sweeping generalisations. “German car” = “German engineering” = quality. As a poster above said, the lived experience of owning a VW in recent decades is quite the opposite, yet it is still a truism. A “French car” naturally is a complete mish mash of quirky and befuddling engineering that only the French could design and cobble together, and of course it’s all unreliable because it’s French - except any cursory investigation will reveal standard parts from Japan like Mitsubishi, and world-renowned bullet-proof engines in Citroen product, etc etc. Doesn’t matter that throughout Europe Peugeot wins awards for “most reliable.” Doesn’t matter. We (journalists) all know what Citroen are (supposed to be) like.

Doesn’t matter. Journalists cannot change their generalisations, because their audience expects them, because they are often actually not particularly educated and have neither the knowledge nor the time to do in depth investigation before reviewing. So French will forever be “quirky”. The number of times I have rolled my eyes at a reviewer calling the C5X “quirky” even though styling-wise it is almost utterly conventional and indeed quite conservative in its styling… (great car and if I can afford PHEV when it comes here I will be getting one.)

I don’t know how that is combatted.

Again, for me it comes down to a decision for Citroen to get product into hands. I think they need to decide to take a solid loss for a couple of years, and get their product into the hands of Aussies. The cars are GOOD (IMHO.) I think the current generation of cars are well designed, forward looking in design, practical, and they have their market-differentiating up-selling point of “comfort.” Go all in on that, get the cars out there. If the $$ are right, people will buy them, they will even take a perceived “risk” if the $$ are right. It’s a highly competitive market.

Have a run of a few years of product on the road, back them up with excellent service (even if you’re losing $), and the brand will then speak for itself. A couple of years investment for long-term gain to put the product back in the mainstream market. It’s doable, if just requires $$ and courage.
 
You have to ignore a lot of the ignorant 'Q' word commentary and focus on the product and objective reviews. Every buyer has slightly different wants and needs, so one person's review perspective doesn't always help. The ever changing EV range and recharge performance eclipsing older EVs and PHEVs really isn't going to matter that much to most buyers given the way they are likely to use those vehicles. A 300km vs 500km range is not relevant to someone who only does 5-10km trips locally. The FUD factors are real and that's why Citroen's 6 year warranty (pre-2018) was so reassuring for many conquest buyers.

Two places to start re the C5-X PHEV are 1) PCA's debut of the model with a link to register interest and 2) this UK review of the C5-X PHEV for anyone interested ...

Citroën Australia Debuts C5 X Plug-In Hybrid at the Citroën Amy's Great Ocean Road Gran Fondo 2023! - Inchcape Australia

www.inchcape.com

 
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September figures:

Citroen C3 – 8
Citroen C4 – 2
Citroen C5 Aircross – 0
Citroen C5 X – 17
Citroen Total – 27

Peugeot 2008 – 26
Peugeot 3008 – 51
Peugeot 308 – 33
Peugeot 408 – 0
Peugeot 5008 – 15
Peugeot 508 – 5
Peugeot Boxer – 7
Peugeot Expert – 33
Peugeot Partner – 26
Peugeot Total – 196

Renault Arkana – 135
Renault Captur – 92
Renault Kangoo – 1
Renault Koleos – 211
Renault Master – 230
Renault Master Bus – 0
Renault Megane – 16
Renault Megane E-Tech – 0
Renault Trafic – 71
Renault Total – 756

Citroën holding the line with its 20-30 sales per month. Good to see some C5X’s hitting the tarmac. Has anyone seen one in the flesh? Seems like a good advertisement for Citroën.

I’m dying to get a C5X Hybrid when they come… not sure my finances are going to stack up though…
 
Apparently, only the PHEV version of the C5X is coming into Australia next year like happened in the UK a year ago. So if you want a plain petrol C5X new, you had better get into one before the end of the year.

You should be able to buy a C5X PHEV version early next year hopefully.

Cheers, Ken
 
tonyfelix said:
September figures:

Good to see some C5X’s hitting the tarmac. Has anyone seen one in the flesh? Seems like a good advertisement for Citroën.
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I got to drive a demonstrator last month while my 508 was in for service at Continental. Really nice! Cabin felt really spacious, tech was great too. The engine, transmission and suspension were typically smooth Citroen, handling was great. I loved the ride height too. I am getting a bit old for lower cars!

I didn't notice the heads-up display at first as I was wearing polarized sunglasses. When I took them off for a moment at the lights I was surprised to see the information floating out in front of the bonnet!
 
October Slow month for Citroen via VFACTS

Citroen
Citroen C3 3
Citroen C4 3
Citroen C5 Aircross 5
Citroen C5 X 1
Citroen Total 12

Peugeot
Peugeot 2008 25
Peugeot 3008 63
Peugeot 308 14
Peugeot 408 0
Peugeot 5008 22
Peugeot 508 17
Peugeot Boxer 12
Peugeot Expert 37
Peugeot Partner 34
Peugeot Total 224

Renault
Renault Arkana 60
Renault Captur 30
Renault Kangoo 5
Renault Koleos 63
Renault Master 169
Renault Master Bus 0
Renault Megane 6
Renault Megane E-Tech 0
Renault Trafic 178
Renault Total 511

Question: have Citroen actually got any stock of C5-X in the country? Only one sold - have they simply sold out and are awaiting new stock with the hybrid next year? Most of the listings on car sales seem to be “new car to order” rather than “dealer new.”
If I walked into a dealer tomorrow to buy a C5-X, would I actually get one?
 
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Would the VFacts numbers include selling of demonstrators?

I think that the delivery time on the made in China C5X from time of order is only a couple of months so I think the importers have decided to only build the cars once customers have ordered them.

Cheers, Ken
 
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