Because of Citroën's new car Versailles, the whole car circle became a mess. The reason is that a car critic said in his video that although Versailles is defined as a B-class car, the actual space experience is only the level of an A+ class car, and the definition of the manufacturer is not appropriate. Subsequently, it caused dissatisfaction among many car owners and car critics, who believed that the size and wheelbase of Versailles had reached the standards of mainstream B-class cars, and many other brands that were widely recognized as B-class models had a smaller internal space than Versailles, but no one questioned whether their positioning was enough.
Anyway, everyone said a word about you, I scolded me for "double standard", I scolded you for "helping manufacturers wash the floor", and they fought to change from technical discussion to life attack. Many melon-eating masses saw that they were arguing so fiercely, and they also began to wonder, in the end, what standards should be divided into A-class cars and B-class cars?
Strictly speaking, it is meaningless to discuss the so-called A and B levels, because it is not actually a world-wide standard, nor a national standard, but an internal manufacturer standard. It originated from the Volkswagen Group, and since Volkswagen began to lay out the platform strategy earlier, in order to facilitate the differentiation of the models developed on each platform, Volkswagen began to use letters as code names to identify the size of the platform. For example, the first generation of Golf developed on the A platform; the first generation of Passat developed on the B platform; and the Audi 100 (the predecessor of the Audi A6) born on the C platform.
Taking the standards of a car company and setting up other models is equivalent to taking the Shang Fang sword of the Ming Dynasty to cut off the official scriptures of the Qing Dynasty, which is definitely inappropriate. What's more, after years of iteration and replacement, in fact, Volkswagen itself has no longer adopted this classification, the integration of a number of different sizes of the platform into the MQB modular platform, which was originally internally designated as the first generation of golf A, and now the eighth generation of golf there is also a huge size difference, AB classification has actually failed.
It's just that Volkswagen, as one of the earliest car companies to enter China, has a huge influence on our side. The Chinese people naturally accepted this method of grading, which became a consensus and has been used until now. The Chinese even translate the grading into Chinese version according to the laws of the public, A level is equal to compact, B level is equal to medium size, C level is equal to medium size, and D level corresponds to large.
In fact, if you think about it carefully, you will feel very outrageous. A set of ambiguous and abandoned standards by the producer can actually be recognized by everyone??? And the major car portals in the model classification, but also without hesitation, no entanglement, seems to know more than the volkswagen classification, passat generation is larger than the size of the generation, the portal still has not considered it as a C-class car, always in B.
Considering that there is no clear standard for the size or wheelbase of the AB classification, this method has been operated so far, basically relying on historical evolution and comparison models.
Let's take a simple example, the original Passat was a typical B-Class car by Volkswagen's standards, right? Now there are countless manufacturers in the world want to compete with the public, Japan, South Korea, the United States opponents have launched similar products, they may be larger than the Passat, but the overall positioning, price, configuration, performance, are relatively close to the Passat, naturally will also be classified as B-class cars. Then the public was not convinced, to create a new generation of Passat, size and wheelbase are slightly better than the opponent, at this time everyone considers that the competitors are all B-class, then the positioning of the new Passat will only be B-class. It is because of this reciprocating cycle that these classic models can stay in their original level in the era of rapid expansion of body size.
For a new model like Versailles, then, to define whether it belongs to A or B, it can only be seen whether its competitors are B-class cars, and whether it has similarities in size and performance with mainstream B-class cars. The top price of Versailles is 186,700, which is similar to the low-end price of the mainstream B-class cars in Germany and Japan; the length of Versailles is 4.8 meters and the wheelbase is 2785 mm; while the mainstream B-class cars are basically around 4 meters 9, and the wheelbase is generally more than 2800 mm.
Do you think it counts as B-class?
We say that in the front, whether you recognize the positioning given by the manufacturer or not, you can't say that the manufacturer is false propaganda, after all, the AB rating is not a mandatory and unified national standard, and the car company is not obliged to comply. You can't even morally blame the manufacturer because it can tell you, "We're using overseas grading." ”
At present, the grading habits around the world are also quite chaotic, if you go to Europe, let the 4S store sell and recommend a B-class car, you may finally bring back mini, polo, carnival and other little guys, absolutely shock you for a whole year. This is because the roads in Europe are narrow and there are a lot of people driving cars, so their A class corresponds to our A00 mini car, the B class corresponds to our A0 class small car, and the C class corresponds to our A class compact car... It's like moving all the sizes backwards by two positions.
The U.S. is even more interesting, where the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is completely weight-based. Curb weight 1. Between 13 tons and 1.36 tons, it is classified as a compact car, between 1.36 tons and 1.58 tons is classified as a medium-sized car, and further up, it is uniformly called a heavy vehicle. With the weight of 1.5 tons of Versailles, in the United States it is undisputed medium-sized car, but then again, some carrying large displacement engines are also piled up with configuration cars, the size is not as good as Versailles, but its weight is more than 1.58 tons, in the United States is called heavy vehicles, ah, just ask you whether it is funny.
Therefore, we should not dwell on the problem of what grading, just say that the picture is just happy, whether you are assigned to A or B, you will not change the size of the car itself, suitable for your own, is the best.