With a strong leadership team, can it awaken the dragon?

Image source: Du Ge at the Shanghai Auto Show in April 2023

"Has been recovering, has been a bad breath" may be a true portrayal of the "French only seedling" Shenlong Automobile, in the face of declining sales, this joint venture car company has gone through more than 30 years, is on the verge of danger.

According to Dongfeng Motor Group Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Dongfeng Group Co., Ltd."), 00489. According to the latest production and sales report, the cumulative sales of DPCA in the first quarter of this year were only 19,500 units, down 6.3% from 20,800 units in the same period last year. For the whole of last year, its sales volume was 80,300 units, a year-on-year drop of 35.81%, which was the largest decline in the group's joint venture camp.

Behind the regression of performance, there are factors of intensified market competition, as well as the reasons for the wrong development strategy and marketing model of DPCA. Its Peugeot and Citroen brands have been complained about being pretentious, failing to understand the characteristics of the Chinese market, and not catering to the preferences of Chinese consumers in many design aspects.

These are the problems left to DPCA executives, and just recently, the company ushered in a major personnel change. On April 9, it was announced at the DPCA Cadre Conference that Chen Bin would no longer concurrently serve as the Secretary of the Party Committee of DPCA Automobile Co., Ltd. and would be replaced by Song Hanming. At the same time, Li Yang, Secretary of the Party Committee and General Manager of DPCA Marketing Center, and Chen Ke, Director of DPCA Purchasing Department, were nominated as Deputy General Manager of DPCA.

Although Chen Bin no longer serves as the secretary of the Party Committee of DPCA Automobile Co., Ltd., he is still the general manager of DPCA. It is understood that since Chen Bin took over as general manager, he has released the "Yuan +" self-help plan, and it has achieved results in 2021. It's a pity that the recovery seems to be just a "flash in the pan".

After the adjustment of the leadership team members, can they lead DPCA to achieve a real recovery?

1

From scenery to "falling out of favor" ●

According to the data, Dongfeng Automobile was jointly built in 1992 by Dongfeng Motor Group Co., Ltd. and French Citroen Company. Its main sales brands, Citroen and Peugeot, as well-known car brands in France, have been favored by the French president, representing French car culture and industrial strength.

For the products of the two brands of Citroen and Peugeot, most domestic users are also very recognized, especially convinced of their handling. As a result, as soon as it entered the Chinese market, it received numerous praises and achieved the excellent results of DPCA.

In 1992, the year when DPCA was founded, its first sedan product, DPCA Fukang (formerly Citroen ZX), was born, and once launched, it became a real French hit model. By 1998, the sales volume exceeded 30,000 units, and Santana and Jetta were called the "old three" in the automobile industry in the 90s of the 20th century.

With the name of Beverly and the addition of the Peugeot brand in 2003, the sales volume of DPCA has been rising. In 2003, it exceeded 100,000 vehicles, in 2006 it exceeded 200,000 vehicles, and in 2015 it peaked more than 700,000 vehicles.

Querying the sales composition of Dongfeng Motor Company in 2015, it can be found that among its subsidiaries that year, only Dongfeng Nissan's sales were above that of Dongfeng Citroen Automobile, including Dongfeng Yueda Kia and Dongfeng Honda are the "defeated men" of Dongfeng Motor Company, and the gap is about 100,000 and 300,000 units, which shows how high the popularity of Peugeot and Citroen is.

It's a pity that this light didn't shine for long. With the intensification of competition in the domestic automobile market and the rise of independent brands, domestic consumers have gradually begun to understand the "French style". From 2016 to 2019, DPCA's sales fell in a straight line, from more than 600,000 units to just over 110,000 units.

This gave DPCA a sense of crisis, so it launched the "Yuan" revival plan in the second half of 2019. According to the plan, "Yuan" is divided into three stages: Peiyuan (2019), Guyuan (2020-2021), and Tuoyuan (2022-2025), and in the Guyuan stage from 2020 to 2021, the sales volume will gradually increase to the level of 250,000 units.

Later, in the second half of 2020, after Chen Bin served as the assistant to the president of Dongfeng Motor Group Co., Ltd., the executive deputy general manager and secretary of the Party Committee of Dongfeng Motor Co., Ltd., he reintegrated the "Yuan" plan to form the "Yuan+" plan, with the goal of returning the company's operating scale to more than 300,000 vehicles during the "14th Five-Year Plan" period.

After this series of revival plans, the sales performance of DPCA has finally improved. In both 2021 and 2022, cumulative sales exceeded 100,000 units, of which sales in 2022 reached 127,000 units, a year-on-year increase of 30%. 2022 is the thirtieth year of the establishment of DPCA, and the recovery of sales can be regarded as a valuable birthday gift to myself.

I thought that DPCA would be on the right track of continuous growth, but I didn't expect the test to come again. In 2023, the sales volume of DPCA will fall again, reaching only 80,300 units, a year-on-year decrease of 35.81%.

Entering 2024, the downward trend has not been reversed. According to the production and sales express report of Dongfeng Group, in the first quarter, the cumulative sales of DPCA were 19,500 units, down 6.3% from 20,800 units in the same period last year. Among them, the sales from January to March were only 6,413, 6,005 and 7,055 respectively.

In contrast, Dongfeng Honda, which once sold below DPCA in sales, has already caught up. Although Dongfeng Honda is also under siege of its own brand, the sales of 604,800 units last year and 136,200 units in the first quarter of this year are still crushed in front of DPCA.

Looking back on the past development of DPCA, it gives people a sense of helplessness of "working hard for decades, once returning to the pre-liberation period". It is said that the general environment is not good, and the decline of joint venture car brands is a common phenomenon. However, Shenlong Automobile is still the most difficult one, and it is still far from the real "turnover".

2

Take multiple measures to stabilize the market

In fact, in the face of sluggish sales and existing problems, the executives of DPCA are quite calm. Chen Bin was blunt in an interview with the media, saying that he had found many problems after he first joined DPCA to carry out his work, including the fact that the vehicle did not maintain its value, and the price was set and promoted, resulting in a bad reputation.

In addition, the market reflects that there are many minor problems in DPCA vehicles, expensive after-sales spare parts, and poor service attitude. Therefore, after Chen Bin arrived at DPCA, he visited more than 50 dealers intensively within a month to understand the front-line problems and then formulate countermeasures.

In 2021, when the sales volume was a little better, someone asked about the situation of DPCA, and Chen Bin's answer at that time was: "We have not come out of the predicament, we have just woken up in the ICU ward, just transferred to the general ward, and we can't get out of bed yet." ”

Looking at it after two or three years, DPCA seems to have not been able to "discharge" from the hospital, and the "condition" has recurred. In order to "survive", DPCA is taking a series of adjustment measures, including adjusting the organizational structure, reducing the scale of personnel, strengthening marketing initiatives, and accelerating the transformation to electrification.

Specifically, at the "2023 DPCA Automobile Culture Festival" in February last year, DPCA sounded the "clarion call" for full electrification. In the next five years, DPCA announced that it will intensively launch 9 new models and a number of facelifted models, of which 8 are new energy models. Starting in 2024, DPCA aims to fully electrify and become the first joint venture to fully electrify new products.

At the 2023 Mid-Year Dealer Conference in June last year, DPCA announced its marketing transformation plan and a new marketing management team. According to the plan, DPCA will carry out unified management and network integration of its Citroen and Peugeot brands, and at the same time readjust the internal organization and sort out the product matrix.

Then, in October last year, Dongfeng Motor Group Co., Ltd. announced that it would purchase specific land use rights, buildings and structures for Dongfeng Automobile in Wuhan and Xiangyang for 1.714 billion yuan. The two parties reached a lease arrangement, under which Dongfeng Motor Group leased the target assets to DPCA for a period of 10 years. The purpose of this is to accelerate the transformation of DPCA to a more flexible asset-light model.

Recently, on April 9, DPCA held a cadre meeting and announced the decision to adjust the members of the company's leadership team. The meeting decided that Chen Bin would no longer concurrently hold the post of secretary of the party committee of the DPCA Automobile Co., Ltd., that Song Hanming would be appointed secretary of the party committee, secretary of the discipline inspection committee, and a candidate for chairman of the labor union of the DPCA Automobile Co., Ltd., and that Chen Ke and Li Yang would be recommended to be deputy general managers of the DPCA Automobile Co., Ltd.

According to the information, the newly promoted executives all have many years of work experience in the Dongfeng department. Among them, Song Hanming joined the Dongfeng Department in July 1996 and was engaged in business planning and party building in Dongfeng Company, Dongfeng Commercial Vehicle, and Dongfeng Citroen Automobile; Li Yang has been engaged in technical and marketing work in Dongfeng Technology Center, Dongfeng Commercial Vehicle, Dongfeng Light Vehicle, and Dongfeng Citroen Company since July 2001; and Chen Ke has been working in Dongfeng Automobile since May 2003 and is a cadre with 21 years of experience in Dongfeng Automobile.

Although Chen Bin no longer serves as the secretary of the Party Committee of DPCA Automobile Co., Ltd., he is still the general manager of DPCA, and his next task is to lead the new team to accelerate the transformation.

At the cadre meeting, Zhang Zutong, member of the Standing Committee of the Party Committee, deputy general manager and chairman of Dongfeng DPCA, said that the new leadership team should seize the opportunity, face the challenge, promote the implementation of the new strategy of DPCA with high quality, and achieve the annual business goals.

According to the Economic Observer, in order to revitalize assets, Dongfeng Dongfeng Automobile will also produce Dongfeng Motor's own brand electric vehicles, which are likely to be Dongfeng eπ and Dongfeng Nano brand electric vehicles according to the plan.

At the same time, DPCA is also trying to expand export sales. In the future, on the basis of stabilizing domestic sales and scale, the company will expand the export business of vehicles and parts with the strategic direction of "made by Shenlong and global sales". At present, several newly planned export projects of DPCA have been fully launched.

This series of planning and adjustments allows us to see the efforts of DPCA. It's just that it's still unknown whether the strong leadership team can awaken the dragon.

Author | Lee Lee

来源 | 车圈能见度（CarVisibility）