Citroen C6 diving "cabbage price", why was the French car forced into a corner?

In the past two days, there is a widely circulated joke in the car circle: the more than 200,000 Citroen C6 is all disadvantages, and the 120,000 C6 is all advantages.

"If you order a car now, you will directly subtract 90,000 from the guide price." Huge sales pressure has made Citroen officially announce that the terminal prices of many models have been loosened like 'fractures'.

But opening this model of exchanging price for quantity, isn't it drinking to quench thirst?

In fact, in recent days, Citroen since breaking the big defense announced the price reduction, the effect is immediate, model popularity and sales can be called explosive growth, 4S stores are as lively as a vegetable market, usually only single-digit stores in the live broadcast room, suddenly poured in tens of thousands of people, 4S stores all staff open live broadcasts to answer consumer prices, sales are so busy that there is no time to eat all day, and the stores that received the notice are working all night.

However, because of the high sales heat brought about by the sharp price reduction, it also means that Citroen, as a joint venture brand that has been operating in China for many years, the price system will be destroyed, and the legal glory premium of that year has almost become a joke.

The reason is very simple, this kind of price reduction that does not pay attention to the bottom line at all, once it starts, it is difficult to carry out price repair in the future. Imagine, when the Citroen C6 is a mid-level car dropped to 120,000 yuan, how can its own compact car C4 be sold? When the "cabbage" price image of this generation of models is deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, if Citroen wants to continue to develop in the domestic market in the future, how will the next generation model be priced?

Now the sharp price reduction to inventory is cool for a while, but as the brand image that the joint venture car company is most proud of, it is also likely to be exhausted in this pass.

Of course, I believe that the car companies themselves are well aware of this. But no way, I don't know if you still have the impression that when China VI A landed in 2019, there was a large area of China 5 cars with price reduction and inventory clearance. Now that China VI B is coming, now a model of national A standard like Citroen C6, through the fire sale can also recover some cash flow, if you can't clear the inventory, it is a huge disaster.

Considering that this time it is the Hubei local government that helps enterprises to subsidize mechanical energy, the concession part borne by the car company is actually not too exaggerated. Therefore, knowing that there will be endless troubles after the big price reduction, car companies also have to do this. Especially Citroen, a car company that is frozen three feet is not a day's cold.

In recent years, the decline of French cars in the domestic market has long been not an industry secret, although Citroen has accelerated the speed of product updates and launches, not only iteratively upgraded the main cars such as C4 and C6, but also launched the C5 X Versailles new products that strive to cater to the current aesthetics, and once used the release of pure electric concept cars to plan a lineup of pure electric + hybrid new energy products.

Although the plan is ambitious, Citroen at this stage, except for several fuel vehicles magic hybrid modification, there is no new energy model that can stand up in the market. Whether it is the new models launched or the main models sold in the past, they are still dominated by fuel vehicles, deviating from the large force of new energy transformation, and fuel vehicles are less competitive than the front-line camp. As a result, some of Citroen's new cars attracted high attention at first, but it was difficult to convert into high sales after launch.

If you dig deeper into the reason, it is that the mainland's automotive industry cannot escape the end of merger and integration. Looking at the world's advanced industrial countries, no one is inevitably moving towards merger and integration.

Although the mainland has a long take-off of the automobile market due to its demographic advantage, it has continued to grow rapidly for more than a decade since the beginning of the new century, providing unprecedented opportunities for the great development of the market. At that time, even some relatively weak foreign brands were able to surpass the fledgling independent brands in the competition and seize the opportunity to survive.

However, in recent years, the domestic car market has stopped growing rapidly and turned to stock competition, and the growth rate of new car sales is far less than before. In this process, independent brands have seized the rise of SUVs earlier than joint venture brands with a keer sense of the market, and in recent years, with the help of the wave of new energy vehicles, they have made more profits with a rapid turnaround.

When the cake no longer expands and car companies need to share a fixed share, the industry will accelerate mergers and integration, and the players at the bottom of the ranking are naturally the first to fall.

There is an old saying in China, "The eldest and the second fight and the third is gone." With the price decline of first-line joint venture brands in recent years, and the rise of independent brands. It is not surprising that car companies like Citroen, which performed relatively poorly during the market dividend period, have fallen into the current situation.

In 2022, BYD Automobile's annual sales ranked first in the sales list of new energy passenger vehicles, reaching 1.7999 million units, accounting for 31.70% of the market share, the second and third places were SAIC-GM-Wuling and Tesla, respectively, and Geely Automobile increased by 277.90% year-on-year, ranking fourth.

According to data provided by Peugeot-Citroen Automobile, the cumulative sales of Peugeot-Citroen Automobile in 2022 will be 127,000 units, a year-on-year increase of 30%.

The cumulative sales in this is still the sales volume after the merger of Peugeot + Citroen.

Left to Citroen, or Peugeot-Citroen Motors, the market share is getting smaller and smaller. If you don't break bones and try to clear your inventory, you will really die on the beach very quickly.

Of course, Citroen will not be the last car company to hammer to death, and the stock competition in the domestic auto market will only become more and more cruel in the future, and it is expected that more than one will fall or fall into slow death in the next two or three years. In particular, the impact of the new energy revolution on slow-transforming car companies, coupled with the joint impact of accelerated industry mergers and integrations, has led to the current precarious situation of domestic second- and third-tier joint venture brands.

*Some pictures come from the Internet, if there is infringement, please contact to delete