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Citroen 'DS9' set for production
20 July 2010
Citroen is working on bringing two of its recent concepts to production: the Metropolis upmarket saloon, which could be badged DS9, and the Survolt sports car.
Citroen’s attempt at breaking into the European executive saloon market with the current C6 hasn’t been successful, but PSA design boss Jean-Pierre Ploué told Autocar that Citroën must persevere, and the Metropolis is the model that could do this, coming to European showrooms as a range-topping DS model
See pics of the Citroen Survolt and Citroen Metropolis
“We cannot afford to let the likes of Audi, Mercedes and BMW forge into Citroën’s heartland supermini territory without fighting back and pushing into theirs,” he said.
He added: “Selling large luxury cars in Europe is not easy at the moment, but I believe Citroën has a great deal more to bring to the market.
“A large, characterful DS flagship model — we could call it a DS9 to reference the original DS19 — could do great things for us.”
Ploué also suggested that developing such a car for the Chinese market, and badging it as a Citroën, would be a sound financial bet.
The Survolt project, meanwhile, has produced a running prototype that gave a demonstration run at the Le Mans Classic race meeting. It has an identical specification to the concept car, giving it 248bhp and 738lb ft of torque.
“It’s still our intention to put the Survolt into low-volume production, and we’re pursuing the idea of a one-make race series,” our source confirmed.
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