When did the French get all sensible? It's not long since Hall One at every Paris show was filled with the sort of way-out-there concepts that looked like they'd been ripped from Salvador Dali's sketchpad.
It's not slammed, it's aerodynamic
Yet this year Peugeot couldn't get any sillier than an ugly SUV concept and Renault couldn't do better than a
new Espace
. The EOLAB struggled to garner much attention.
To thanks be to Citroen, for some compellingly old-school frippery. There was a far more interesting green concept in the shape of a 'Hybrid Air' version of the C4 Cactus, featuring PSA's promising compressed air energy recovery system. Okay, so it could only do a claimed 141mpg, but - unlike the EOLAB - you could look at it without dislocating your jaw yawning.
But the star was the Citroen Divine DS concept, a tubby little hatchback with interlocking louvres instead of a back window, a rear-view camera system in place of all that old-fashioned glass and a purple pleated leather interior that looked like it had been rejected by the Moulin Rouge as being 'a bit too much.'
Apparently it's showing off DS's future styling direction, with Citroen having finally decided to spin its upmarket sub-division into its own brand. Power comes from the familiar 1.6-litre THP 270hp engine as seen in the Peugeot RCZ R - hopefully a precursor for Citroen using the same motor.
