A high and elongated silhouette of a half-break, half-SUV vehicle, a substantial length (4.8 meters), a plush and comfortable appearance: here is the C5X, the new top-of-the-range flagship of Citroën (Stellantis group, born in January from the merger between PSA and Fiat Chrysler), revealed Monday April 12 in world premiere. The C5X, which will be marketed at the end of 2021-beginning of 2022, “Renews the long-haul segment (…) in the purest Citroën tradition”, the press release tells us.
Here is therefore an heir to the mythical DS (1955), CX (1974), XM (1989), except that it will be manufactured not in France in the historic Rennes factory, nor even in Europe, but in China, at the Stellantis site in Chengdu. This is likely to provoke some political turmoil and bring up the advocates of the ” made in France “. Especially since cars of European brands – and specifically French – which are manufactured in China for export, it starts to look like the beginning of a trend.
The DS9, from the same Stellantis group, will also come out of a Chinese factory. This large sedan, produced on the same technical platform as the C5X, begins its marketing in Asia these days, and should land on the European market in the fall. In a completely different niche, the Renault group is also having its small electric Dacia Spring manufactured in China, near Wuhan, from the Renault K-ZE already offered on the Chinese market, and which arrived this winter in the French dealerships.
0 to 500,000
“Sales in Europe of automobiles produced in China by Western manufacturers should, according to our estimates, drop from zero in 2020 to 500,000 in 2025, announces Denis Schemoul, associate director at the analysis firm IHS Markit. Stellantis will produce large D-segment vehicles there by industrial opportunism – this allows to load factories currently overcapacity. But most European manufacturers will instead have small electric vehicles manufactured in China. “
These mini battery models represent significant production volumes. These are the Renault-Dacia Spring, as we have seen, but also the electric Mini from the BMW group, or the zero-emission Smart from Daimler. The latter are leaving France this year, saying goodbye to the Hambach plant (Moselle), where they will be replaced by the big thermal 4 x 4s of Ineos Grenadier.
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