Renault say it's too early to launch sub-premium brand

Chief designer, Laurens van der Acker said Renault isn’t ready to launch a premium sub-brand like Citroen has done with the DS range.

Van Der Acker who has been at Renault for just over a year now, said Renault needs time to build up the design of its key line-up of cars.

'I hope it works for Citroen because it puts exciting cars on the roads,' he said. 'But it is too early for us. I feel we need to do our homework.

'Citroen has built a family of cars and is now building on top of it. We need to build our family first.'

Van der Acker says Renault would also need to do its homework to see if creating an upscale variant of a car would make more profit than making just a remarkable single model.

'From a holistic point of view does the sum of the two – for example the C3 and the DS3 – more than making just one good car.'

Nonetheless, van der Acker admits that just as Citroen called on its heritage to make an updated DS range for the 21st century, Renault has a history too that it should resurrect in the future.

'Renault has a treasure chest of icons,' he said. 'We need to make more of that.'

Skoda developing another C-segment model

Skoda Auto will introduce an all-new compact family car in 2012.

Internal sources have established that the car will be developed completely by Skoda engineers, using the modular platform technology that underlines all passenger cars within VAG.

The newcomer will be a c-segment car and will sit between the Fabia supermini and Octavia small family car, although it could arrive as a sedan. The new model will give Skoda a more conventionally proportioned small family car in its range.

‘The Fabia is too large to be a traditional supermini, and the Octavia is too large to be a traditional small family car. The new car will bridge that gap and give our customers a car that sits perfectly in the segment.’

 

Fiat aborts Topolino premium city-car for cheaper model

Well placed internal sources suggest Fiat is working hard on an all-new cost effective city-car, while the upmarket Topolino will be axed.

The car will replace the cheap and aging Seicento, which is still available in some European markets like Italy, where it’s known as the ‘600’. The forthcoming model will have comparable proportions to the Toyota iQ.

The Topolino was based upon the current Panda city-car and was initially proposed to be an upmarket city-car, but it failed to get the green light because Fiat executives believed that “it wasn’t right for the market”.