Citroën C-Elysée

Here’s an example of two very close brothers. The PSA group has designed an entirely new compact sedan with special focus at the emergent markets, but intended to be sold under both Peugeot and Citroën labels. But instead of following some the really sad attitude of forcibly pretending that they’re 100% different models as if the public was blind, the new cars were first revealed almost at the same time and will even be offered at some countries in parallel. Now the interior information was released, and again for both of them.

Badge engineering is a tricky strategy: it can bring and save lots of money when done right, but it’s very easy to result in one or more badly-accepted vehicles which had expensive project costs. After all, there are several factors to pay attention, and none of them work as a on/off button; they’re much more like a dimmer. For example, it can be chosen if the siblings will be nothing more than different labels applied at the same car (the first Citroën Berlingo and Peugeot Partner), present deeper changes but still share a lot (Dodge Dart and Fiat Viaggio), or if they’ll be separated models with only a common structure (both the latest Opel Corsa and Fiat Punto). They could also differ more or less about if they will fight for the same public or dedicate each one itself to a particular one, or even how many of them would be sold at each market – Brazil, for instance, is the only one to offer both Fiat Freemont and Dodge Journey. Considering these are low-price cars, PSA showed it is possible to 301 and C-Elysée give separated but equally good impressions. They came from the same project and it’s not hard to see, and PSA needs to be complimented for how they revealed them: it was done at the same time, but each brand presented its own vehicle and therefore its respective focus.

The main concern at the common parts’ project surely was to make them easily suit both company styles. The sides use good-tasted but neutral lines, such as the strong fold above the handles: make the section look modern but without too much personality that could fit really well to one but terribly to the other. The previous C-Elysée was a ridiculous Chinese face-lift to the old ZX, which forced the most recent Citroën style trends into a twenty years older vehicle. The new one presents a very elegant design, specially inspired at the big brother so far called C4 L. The overall idea is to give the impression of a bigger car, and this gets easily accomplished with the use of a well-divided third volume, which not only increases trunk size but also escapes from the already commonplace “coupe wannabe” rear end. The opulence impression gets stronger with the really well-designed front. The headlights are high and were placed at the extremes to visually increase the area, but not too much to don’t disagree with what’s expected from a sedan. The upper air intake follows the brand style while the lower one has a big size, but shaped to don’t look like the older Peugeot’s ones. The tail lights don’t invade the trunk lid in order to reduce costs, but also got a much more solid appearance. Style and personality definitely are not a problem to this car.

The interior will disappoint who was expecting the same differentiation level of the outside, but it is there. You want to know how to find it? Start with the colors. Peugeot 301 uses a lot of black and grey, and this can be understood as a message that it’ll be the cheaper one among these two, specially after that naming change announcement which has defined the one-ended numbers to the emergent markets’ products. On the other hand, Citroën has always been the classier side of PSA, so it’s more logical that C-Elysée receives the fancier interior. Combining two colors is always a nice item because of the resemblance with the luxury models, so here there is beige and black at the console, seats and even at the steering wheel. This also gives a bigger space impression, even though this illusionism isn’t needed at this models at all: they already follow the new concept of compact sedan, where one of the main concerns are having excellent internal space for five occupants. There aren’t materials with the best possible quality, but the chosen ones are good. And this car gets even better with the equipment packages, who are expected to also follow the generosity trend of these cars, which includes the integrated sound system showed at the pictures.

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