Citroen XM Forum

That should result in big quality improvements then.

Kiss of death having the French government as a shareholder as they will block any further restructuring. I bought a Peugeot last year (a pepper grinder!) that didn't work. If you can't get the basics right after 200 years...

Charles M wrote:Kiss of death having the French government as a shareholder as they will block any further restructuring.

True, I was quite disheartened when I read that detail.

Renault is partly state owned. Or was. When they decided that they were no longer going to design large exec cars in 2008, the French government told them to think again.......

This subject was covered in the Truth About Cars (the very good American website) but not at Car on-line. They seem to have given up reporting industry news. As to the matter at hand, in the short term and medium term it is a lifeline for PSA but in the long term, it´s another shift in the migration of expertise to China. As an industrial designer, I am aware that manufacturing expertise is tied to factories. You can move a designer around the place but factories are harder to shift. It will very soon be a matter of China having both the machines and the minds to make better and better cars. While Germany has retained both capacities, France might lose them and find that without factories there is not the wealth to buy even the cheaper cars China will be making.

http://www.driventowrite.com

Yes France is in a bit of a mess in terms of its debt and it's difficulties in changing old practices. It tries to hold on and support its own car industry but the French buy anything nowadays and their manufacturers are weak on the world stage. PSA has been on its knees for a long while and now the ultimate sacrifice is to let the Chinese in.

Think all it really means is things come in era; we've had 60 years of hydropneumatic Citroens and that's been a great era. The 1930s-1970s pre-Peugeot era was even better. The badge name remains but the old guys that built and maintained the Citroen design philosophy have all retired long ago. Let's hope the Chinese designers find a surge of flair, practicality and advanced engineering that Citroen was renowned for!

France is in the same kind of state now that the UK was in the 70's and 80's. Love her or hate her France is in desperate need of a Thatcher, single-minded and abrasive she may have been, but at the moment France is only going one way.

Th*tch*r ?! I think not. The UK is still paying dearly for the selfishness, elitism, me-first and social inequality that was her legacy. France, and hopefully the UK, can do better than all that. Oh dear, I think I might have broken a Forum rule here . . .

Not sure we are much better at balancing the books than France; our city bankers were a large part of the recent global mess, its our house price rise obsession gets us absolutely nowhere, our manufacturing industry that was sacrificed and we now have a government thats running the country like a sweet shop. Meanwhile over the water they still have a strong sense of society and of family, a respect for technical achievement, a pride in the nation, a quite hopeless government that's getting into worse and worse debt, and frequent strikes that seize up the nation. But when you walk around in France looking at everything from door handles to pylons you see technical design flair and a history of designing things that made sense and looked good. They have had for donkeys years a significant vein of engineering competence that has shone very brightly in the aerospace, nuclear and automotive sectors and not least amongst that were the cars wearing a Citroen badge. Meanwhile we ended up with British Leyland, after decades of crappy "that'll do" engineering and nowadays we just creep to the Japanese carmakers so they set up factories to build their cars here. France somehow needs to get into an economic balance without sacrificing too many of its distinctive attributes; not sure it can do that, might be too difficult and surrendering PSA to the Chinese certainly looks like capitulation. But I for one don't see how this nation of shopkeepers as Napoleon put it can offer much of a role model for them to follow.

Well said, Marc! Engineering and design excellence needs to be constantly striven for. The UK still has great leading expertise (as does France), but the "lag time" between what we can create and what Japan (and now China, India...) can mass produce is getting ever shorter. Too much to hope that Europe might pool its technological resources (CERN and Aerospace being notable exceptions). Sweet shop??? We've been saying for some time that the Current Lot wouldn't be able to organise a transport cafe! They're certainly incapable (or have too much vested interest in) controlling the private sector, with whom they are such close buddies. Will the electorate never learn?