Re: PSA´s large cars

The irony here is that despite desperately attempting to move upmarket, PSA & Renault have to axe their most aspirational models due to falling sales.
But with the C5 and forthcoming 408 growing in size so much, there appears to be little need or demand for such large saloons anyway.
PSA & Renault suffer, like all mid-market marques from a problem of perception. In Peugeot’s case, they haven’t made a convincing large car since the 604 (which sold strongly in Europe) and these days there is so little cachet in the Peugeot name that any further attempt would be futile.
I foresee the last vestiges of Citroen’s individuality to die with the advent of the DS series. This will be all about fashion and style and nothing at all about distinctiveness. PSA desperately need to go upmarket and this is their only path upwards. It won’t work. The hydropneumatics will be abandoned. Too costly and few know or care now, except a few enthusiasts who harbour the vain hope that Citroen will return to innovation and daring. Some hope!
 

Re: PSA´s large cars

It's not unusual to have to wait for new models, but they always come out in the end. Best wishes.

To your list of dead big cars from mass manufacturers could be added the Lancia Gamma. And there used to be two door versions of that and many of the cars you mention - Granada Coupe, Opel Monza. I'm afraid the big cars have gone the same way as the bespoke roadsters and coupes, leaving us with hatchbacks, midsize cars and of course the new SUVs and crossovers. At least the Germans have added more models to their line-ups including four door "coupoons" (or saloupes), make some interesting coupes (TT and Scirocco) and offer some roadsters (SLK, Z4) but it would be nice if the Italians and French did more of this. Of course, it would be really nice if Britain still had a mass manufacturer, but that is another story.....

I can't fault the Germans and Japanese for their success. They have built up their brands over many years, and have had the vision and discipline to succeed. People just love their badges! But I'm glad to have lived at the time I have, and got to see the cars of the 60s and 70s with their National not to mention Company character. It was a golden age of the beginning of the modern auto.

Re: PSA´s large cars

Sir! Indeed, your reminder that that not only were there large D-class cars from the mainstream makers but that there were 2-door variants nearly moves me to tears. On the one side, the fact is the death of the big car doesn´t matter in the least. They´re just cars. I can take off my automobiliste hat if necessary. Putting it back on, I can say the loss of the mass market car is a bit sad, a loss of a little bit of unselfconscious diversity. I admire in a cold way the achievements of the German brands. By all measurable parameters, they are pretty effective things. I like to think that in a world of 5 billion people that is richer than at any time in history we´d have more variety, not less. Isn´t it perverse that when folk have more disposable income that fewer and fewer pony up for interesting and individual cars? If this isn´t boring or sad, it is worth noting. In 1976 it wasn´t an act of social suicide or financial lunacy to buy a big Ford or a big Citroen. Somehow consumers have internalised the criticism of these cars and this stops them even going near them which is why worthy and reasonable contenders like the Vel Satis, Thesis, 607, C6 and Scorpio are all dead names (or soon will be).

´How significant was the 604? Not very. It was however, an agreeable thing to sit in and to drive and it was a French expression of conservative values. Or perhaps I could say it was a significant as any major French film or novel of the era, that it told the French a kind of story about who they were and what they aspired to or represented.

I´ve just left my barge in for a €2500 visit to the mechanic. Gulp.

Re: PSA´s large cars

It´s indeed likely that the consumers have changed in France but also across Europe. And the question is about how in an age of more consumer choice and an alleged increase in individuality (this is perhaps much overstated) the selection has reduced. American taste is still for large cars but today that seems to mean trucks. The sedans of Cadillac and Lincoln were outcompeted not by German tautness (it´s not really relevant in the US where the roads are bad and the bends few) but by German quality (the perceived kind). Buyers migrated from Sedans de Ville and Contis to either Escalades et al and bahnstormers of various types. Still and all, the French large cars are not so terribly nor so wilfully odd as to fully explain the categorical inability of PSA and Renault to flog them. They have tried aping the Germans when, for example, the "Safrane" was offered as a bland Eurosaloon, and when the XM was launched with marketing slogans emphasing its membership of the "oberklasse" and the thoughtful provision of coal-hole black and grey interiors of fairly conventional design. And the French have tried haut-Frenchness in the form of the interestingly styled and packaged VelSatis and Avantime and the fairly individual C6. The Italians gave us the Thesis and 166 and they were not thanked. Only Britain still fights the good fight with Jaguar but it´s very much a product from a higher sector.  In failing to make a good large car, the French display a lack of confidence and marketing talent. Only the very prejudiced would say these cars are so bad as to justify their extinction.

Re: PSA´s large cars

I see a number of factors at work here. A convergence of taste and desire across the developed world; as we become more connected our tastes become less ‘local’ and therefore the very thing that others may cherish about a nation’s culture (automotive or otherwise) gets swept away in the mass absorption of collective value.
Hence, the very ‘Frenchness’ of, say a Renault 30 or Citroen CX, no longer resonates amongst the French in their homeland. Add in the fact that the kind of loping comfortable, softly suspended cars for which the French were famous, were designed as such to cope with terrible road surfaces; the kind of conditions it is very difficult to find in France today. With excellent road surfaces, the need for soft suspension has receded. (I concede there is also an element of fashion and keeping up with the Germans in this).
The French marques also shot themselves in the foot many times over the past 25 years or so. There was a point when Peugeot were known for their quality - (my 304 Coupe was a very well screwed together little car) - but by the 1980’s they squandered that reputation completely with the shoddiest build of almost anything of that era. (Admittedly, Citroen came a close second) I recall driving a then quite new BX 1.9GT from Bandon to Cork City one afternoon when the factory-fitted tilt & slide sunroof detached from it’s flimsy plastic mountings & flew off into the hedgerows. I loved BX’s but the build quality was quite simply appaling. (And as for the Peugeot 405..)
Renault had a hit with the 25 & then blew it with the dull as ditchwater Safrane. The Val Satis just looked odd. The XM was a brave effort, but after the CX it never seemed enough. (I‘ve always liked them though).
Peugeot flushed with success with the 604, then launched the 505 - a car almost as large, rendering the big saloon redundant almost overnight. Especially in France, where they tend to avoid ‘large’ cars. The 605 looked like a bloated 405 & the 607 just looks misshapen and wrong.
The other side to this is the fact that sales of S-Class sized cars are dying out year on year - even amongst the prestige marques. All the cars of this size I see in London these days are private hire. Maybe they are simply too large in this rapidly space-conscious world we inhabit for the average (well-heeled punter). Or maybe the mid-sized models below them are now perceived as the optimum size?
I lament the loss of choice brought about by the death of the mass-marque flagships and am saddened by the proliferation of the same prestige badges everywhere.
One of the heartening things about my recent holiday in France was the comparative lack of ‘premium’ marques on the roads & the fact that the French appear to still find a Peugeot/Citroen/Renault perfectly adequate, merci. Long may it remain so…