DS

08 Jul 2016

It must have been thrilling to be sitting in a meeting room in Paris with a sharp deadline for a new label to be launched into the luxury car market. That meeting room belonged to the PSA group which has been keeping Citroën and Peugeot together since 1976 and, according to its creators, it was meant to become the new French Ferrari. Let’s have a look at its history.

It all started started in 1955 when Citroën used the acronym DS for the first time to name one of its most popular models ever, the so called Désirée Spéciale (Special Desire), a car with an innovative and elegant design which would be dominating the market for twenty years. Its success is an objective fact, otherwise this model would have not inspired a marketing strategy almost half a century later.

In fact it is in 2008 that PSA recalls that gorgeous model and decides to reuse it by calling a new Citroën products range after it. Surprisingly the acronym has changed meaning a little bit: DS stays now for Different Spirit . It seems reasonable, though, to presume that, during this new chapter of history, the new idea was to make a separate label out of DS and that the new line of products was just an experiment to test the public’s reaction beforehand.

In 2011 PSA signs the first agreements to open a new firm in Shenzen, China. Not only the production is taken, thus, abroad but also the formalization of a new firm is. DS is then registered as a separate brand in China in 2014 while Europe would have to wait one more year to see the DS5 finally untangled from Citroën.

This is definitely a sign of time passing by as well as determination of PSA managers to establish it as a first quality brand worldwide. The project is very ambitious: to launch six unique models by 2020.