Production of the C6 ends
Posted: Fri Dec 14, 2012 10:07 am
[urlhttp://europe.autonews.com/article/20121212/BLOG15/312129996/1295/ANE&cciid=internal-aneinside-mostright][/url]
"Only 556 C6s were sold in Europe in the first 10 months of this year. It's easy to understand why Citroen had to halt production of the car. Sister brand Peugeot also has quit the large sedan segment".
It is a real sign of Citroen´s long-standing irrelevance in the large car sector that little fuss has been made of the demise, without replacement, of the C6. It´s not as if the vehicle didn´t get quite sympathetic reviews. Car Magazine even ran one as long-termer. They may as well have run a Bristol Blenheim for all the attention the market paid the car. There were only about 2,000 people who were ever going to buy one in the UK and half of them couldn´t afford it. Top Clarkson magazine was also very kind to the car. They listed it as one of their cars of the year (that´s probably Paul Horrell´s influence) and gave the car a nice segment on the television version of the magazine (to be shown somewhere for ever more it seems). So what went wrong? It goes back to the XM with its famous and probably vastly over-stated reliability problems. More relevant was the XM´s failure to be really bloody good at something straight away. I own one of these cars and like it alot but most drivers won´t take the time to understand a car´s underlying capability. So, the XM lost 300,000 buyers every year for 10 years. Once lost they never come back. But the C6 would have struggled even if the XM had been as successful as the E-class it was supposed to compete with. This is because with the C6 the firm gave up on the concept of a "useful big car" and reckoned styling and nostalgia was going to sell the vehicle. Styling can only help cars that are good in the first place. The C6 was badly packaged and, as far as I can ascertain, rode no better than the best of the rest. It was expensive when there was no sign the market would pay this price. it didn´t have its own engines and the choice of engines was limited. Underneath all this is also the fact that Citroen didn´t have the experience to make a good big car at the Mercedes and BMW level.
So, I wouldn´t expect too much from Citroen in future in this sector. The memory of the CX has faded, the DS is a kind of mythical car now and the XM is only recalled as an embarrassment though it did still sell vastly better than the car it was, eventually replaced by.
"Only 556 C6s were sold in Europe in the first 10 months of this year. It's easy to understand why Citroen had to halt production of the car. Sister brand Peugeot also has quit the large sedan segment".
It is a real sign of Citroen´s long-standing irrelevance in the large car sector that little fuss has been made of the demise, without replacement, of the C6. It´s not as if the vehicle didn´t get quite sympathetic reviews. Car Magazine even ran one as long-termer. They may as well have run a Bristol Blenheim for all the attention the market paid the car. There were only about 2,000 people who were ever going to buy one in the UK and half of them couldn´t afford it. Top Clarkson magazine was also very kind to the car. They listed it as one of their cars of the year (that´s probably Paul Horrell´s influence) and gave the car a nice segment on the television version of the magazine (to be shown somewhere for ever more it seems). So what went wrong? It goes back to the XM with its famous and probably vastly over-stated reliability problems. More relevant was the XM´s failure to be really bloody good at something straight away. I own one of these cars and like it alot but most drivers won´t take the time to understand a car´s underlying capability. So, the XM lost 300,000 buyers every year for 10 years. Once lost they never come back. But the C6 would have struggled even if the XM had been as successful as the E-class it was supposed to compete with. This is because with the C6 the firm gave up on the concept of a "useful big car" and reckoned styling and nostalgia was going to sell the vehicle. Styling can only help cars that are good in the first place. The C6 was badly packaged and, as far as I can ascertain, rode no better than the best of the rest. It was expensive when there was no sign the market would pay this price. it didn´t have its own engines and the choice of engines was limited. Underneath all this is also the fact that Citroen didn´t have the experience to make a good big car at the Mercedes and BMW level.
So, I wouldn´t expect too much from Citroen in future in this sector. The memory of the CX has faded, the DS is a kind of mythical car now and the XM is only recalled as an embarrassment though it did still sell vastly better than the car it was, eventually replaced by.
A new GS Pallas would suit me down to the ground... They don't even need to change the shape of it as far as I'm concerned. It's timeless and classically right...