DS still hasn't found its place in Europe and now aims even higher: it's being compared with Rolls-Royce!

The brand DS was born in 2009 as a sub-brand of Citroën and became independent in 2014. This means it has now been on the market for 15 years and has offered some quite interesting cars. Even so, the figures are not helping it maintain the spirit of success that it aspired to at Stellantis. Sales in 2022 only reached 37,480 units, a 22% drop compared with 2021.

Its purpose was to offer models that stood out from Citroën’s average and that would go head-to-head with the models of Audi and BMW, but it is obvious that it has not achieved this, at least as far as sales figures are concerned. It should be noted that the presidential car in France is precisely a DS, so it has not been a complete failure.

That exclusivity and Stellantis’s ambitions for the brand have led DS not to be discouraged and want to take a new direction for its future expectations. It no longer has BMW and Audi in its sights. It believes that, in terms of design and technical features, it is already on their level, although buyers are not yet convinced of this.

So it has decided to draw up a new plan, and what it now seeks is to raise the level of its models in order to stand up to brands that are no longer premium but are outright luxury. The targets to beat now, according to statements by the brand’s design director, Thierry Metroz, are Bentley and Rolls-Royce.

For the brand’s executive, the intention is to become “the Louis Vuitton of the automotive industry“. Although that may sound somewhat pretentious (in fact, quite pretentious), DS has models that already offer features of luxury cars. The new DS No8 already stands out from its competitors in the current segment.

According to Metroz, the interior of this model moves away from the design approach of German models and is closer to a style similar to Bentley. Obviously, without being one. DS knows that the path is not easy and that these 10 years as an independent brand are not enough to position itself as a luxury brand. It will probably need another 20 years on the market and must prove its worth to earn that recognition.

The sense of luxury is DS’s goal, so to maintain good financial health within Stellantis, which is not in a particularly rosy situation, it focuses on this issue: it does not need to sell more cars, but move up the category of the ones it has. To do so, it will have to make decisions about design elements proposed by Stellantis and set itself apart from the rest of the group’s brands with its own proposals.

So in the coming years we will have bolder DS models, with higher-quality materials and designs oriented toward luxury. A European brand that wants to position itself between the two main and best-known luxury brands, starting from a premium car position but failing to fully take hold.