If you want to have a future, you have to grasp the present!
Author: Liang Zhihao
Driven by Versailles' rare "French explosive model", the DPCA Group handed over a report card with annual sales of more than 100,000 at the end of last year, although this is only the sales level of the head car company for one month, but for the DPCA, which has been in turmoil in recent years, this is already a very difficult achievement.
This good momentum also continued into the first natural month of 2022 - the cumulative sales of DPCA reached 13,000 vehicles in January, an increase of 85% compared with the same period last year, and also set a new monthly sales record in four years.
However, the good news about the legal system did not come with this "good news". On the contrary, shortly after the Spring Festival, the second factory of The DPCA Group in the Wuhan Economic and Technological Development Zone was ultimately not saved, and Dongfeng Honda will take over the factory that has been in a "semi-shelved" state due to poor sales.
According to a person familiar with DPCA, it was actually the government that considered the current situation of DPCA, so it bought back the factory and sold it to Dongfeng Honda. In the future, Dongfeng Honda will use this factory as its own new energy vehicle production base, after all, Dongfeng Honda has announced that it will no longer launch pure fuel vehicles in the Chinese market after 2030, and the new factory can obviously provide great convenience for Dongfeng Honda to achieve the transition from fuel to new energy.
For Shenlong, the second factory with an annual output of 150,000 vehicles is just a waste of resources to continue to stay around.
Do you still want to separate after selling the factory?
I thought that being forced to sell the factory was already miserable, but for Shenlong, there was far more bad news. Shortly after the second plant was transferred to Dongfeng Honda, some financial media revealed that a major structural adjustment was about to occur inside DPCA.
Among them, Citroën and Peugeot brands will be "separated", led by the Chinese side and the French side respectively, but the two will still share the existing production base, using the so-called "two rooms and one hall" model, and the joint venture share ratio will not be adjusted for the time being.
In the future, the Citroën brand will continue to be dominated by the Chinese side, and it is likely that more models in line with our market environment will be launched according to the tastes of Chinese consumers, while the Peugeot brand will be led by the French side, and it may be more "legal" in the creation of products.
At the same time, the relationship between Citroen and Peugeot two major brands will also change from "cooperation" to "competition", in layman's terms, the future Citroen and Peugeot, like the "North and South Volkswagen", "North and South Toyota" between the competitive relationship, but this competition exists within the Dongfeng system rather than between different car companies.
Internal friction or spurring each other?
When we turn back the time to 2019, when DPCA was in the darkest moment of the brand, after years of losses, in order to survive in the Chinese market, DPCA launched the "meta plan". In addition to the "sales cake" such as the annual sales of 250,000 vehicles in 2020-2021 and the annual sales of 400,000 vehicles in 2022-2025, what is more important is that the Dongfeng Citroen and Dongfeng Peugeot 4S stores merge, and one store can sell both Citroën and Peugeot models at the same time.
The establishment of the dual-brand store is indeed an effective reduction in the cost of building a store, but also helps the expansion of the two major brands, but the dual-brand store invisibly increases the cost of communication with customers, reduces the tone of the brand and more importantly - causing the two brands to compete invisibly.
However, for the DPCA group that "witnessed" the withdrawal of the two major French brands of Renault and DS at that time, this seemingly helpless strategy also became their last resort.
However, the so-called plan can not catch up with the changes, in 2021, Peugeot Citroen Group and Fiat Chrysler Group officially merged to form a new car group - STELLANTIS, the world's third largest car company with 14 brands, naturally has its own ideas for the big cake of the Chinese market. After a year of low-keying, at the beginning of this year, SLOWANTIS suddenly announced that it would officially announce its latest Strategic Plan for the Chinese Market on March 1 this year, and there is no doubt that DPCA and GAC FCA are the protagonists of this plan.
Some time ago, STELLANTIS announced its intention to increase its stake in GAC FCA "without authorization", and they planned to increase their shareholding ratio from 50% to 75% to gain control of the JEEP brand, but GAC expressed its ignorance of this and expressed its dissatisfaction with THE STEELTIS Group.
However, the ambitions of this huge new group for the Chinese market are also unmistakable.
Returning to the topic of "separation", I personally believe that the so-called "internal friction" will not actually appear, and unlike the era of Guangzhou Peugeot, today's French have long lost their arrogance in the past, which can be seen in the Versailles C5X from China to the global market. On the contrary, if, as we speculate, Citroën and Peugeot will focus on localized products and European original products respectively in the future, it will not only not be internal friction for Chinese consumers and The Dragon Group, but will even be an opportunity to enhance the brand image.
"Fa Fan" wants the car above, not the car below
On the one hand, for those consumers who "believe" in the legal system, they can choose a variety of more authentic French models in the Peugeot brand, and for those mainstream consumers, more local Citroën products can also give them one more choice when buying a car. In any case, it is more attractive than the current bunch of models that have lost the essence of French cars and do not meet the preferences of domestic consumers.
If you want to have a future, you have to grasp the present
However, back to reality, it seems too early to talk about the future after the separation of the Shenlong family, and regardless of whether this distinct differentiation of the two major brands can successfully make a name for itself, as far as the current sales of these two major brands are concerned, it is actually difficult to support their "tossing".
No matter how strong the "Versailles", the heat will fade one day, how to use this hard-won recovery to drive the brand recovery is the most urgent practical problem in front of the Shenlong Group.
On the one hand, Dongfeng Group's "open source throttling" is menacing (look at how many joint venture brands Dongfeng has cut in the past two years), on the other hand, STELLANTIS "new officials take office three fires", sandwiched in the middle of the DPCA Group wants to kill a blood road of its own, relying on one or two "explosive cars" alone, it is far from enough. This rare sales volume is growing positively, and hopefully it is a signal of recovery, not a return to the light.
Otherwise, we may only be able to recall the "glory" of french cars in "Taxi Express" in the future.
(Some image source network)
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