It’s not often I can’t identify a car. You know those challenges where you’re shown a fragment of a rear light cluster or a door handle? I’m good at them. I was nearly caught out on a recent shopping trip when the new white crossover parked next to me took a few seconds to be identified as the latest version of the MG HS.
Perhaps that failure threw me because later, while driving along a suburban side street in the dark, I passed a discreetly handsome four-door saloon of recent manufacture that I just could not place. In the hour or so that passed before I could drive back the same direction, every minute was spent thinking about it.
A slower pass gave me the chance to look at the front and I was relieved to see the DS branding on the grille. Briefly stopping to take a photo to share on Instagram, the driver in the car behind me didn’t share my fascination and I had to move away. For the life of me, I could not work out what the actual model was. DS something. Elysée, maybe?
It was a DS Automobiles DS 9. I’ve just googled it to check again. An attractive, well-proportioned four-door saloon introduced in 2020. Loaded with technology, this plug-in hybrid can be ordered with all-wheel drive. Initially slipping under the radar, the more you study this car’s design, the more detail comes out. Despite all this, it has been a catastrophic failure in the showroom.
The slightly ropey data available from the How Many Left website suggests that there are around 100 DS 9s these on the road in the UK, only one of which is all-wheel drive. With an RRP over £60,000 it is very easy to understand why. What is not so easy to comprehend is why Stellantis bothered to import it in the first place.
This is not something peculiar to DS Automobiles. We have all become terrible badge snobs in the last 25 years, obsessed with premium brands. Provenance is all important. It has taken decades for Lexus to really establish itself over here, during which time Nissan’s Infiniti brand has admitted defeat, while Hyundai’s Genesis hasn’t exactly hit the big time.
At some point in the middle of the 1990s, it became socially unacceptable to choose a Ford, Vauxhall, Peugeot, Renault or Citroën over a BMW or Mercedes-Benz. Even Alfa Romeo, Lancia and Saab struggled to justify the existence of their executive models. Ford didn’t help itself by saddling its Granada successor, the Scorpio with a distinctly ‘halibutian’ appearance, gifting the dwindling non-premium executive space to Vauxhall’s Teutonic Omega.
Renault’s Safrane, Peugeot’s 605 and 607 fought boldly with some success in the home market, but elsewhere very few apart from dealer sales managers found their way into the plush surroundings of a French barge. A similar fate awaited Alfa’s 166, Citroën’s C6 and numerous Japanese limos, such as the Honda Legend. All of them were distinctive and capable. None of them sold. Cadillac had a try too, before being laughed off the stage.
Efforts from Rover in the shape of the 75, and Saab’s 9-5 managed to hold the fort until both brands collapsed into a heap of twisted metal with a lack of investment; victims of operating in a contracting market space. By the early 2010s, the SUV became king. Saloons were unfashionable (and still are). Just ask Volvo, which has finally given up on the format in many of its territories. The Jaguar brand is now on sabbatical.
The sight of that DS Automobiles DS 9 is a reminder, though, of a dogged refusal to accept this reality. The legacy brands have reinvented themselves, fitted out new showrooms and continued to try and flog us their version of executive motion. Hyundai didn’t shift any of its Grandeur or Genesis saloons, but it clings on with its new Genesis brand from a small number of UK boutiques.
That business model didn’t work out well for Infiniti, which even built cars in the UK for a while. It sold a dozen different models over here, presumably nearly all of them to dealer principals or rental fleets before shutting up shop. Each one of those cars was extremely competent, but it didn’t matter.
The Volkswagen Phaeton, Passat CC and Arteon all lingered in dealer inventory for too long, while the Škoda brand mopped up those looking for a large, comfortable car with generous specification via the Superb. Vauxhall/Opel attempted to convince everyone that it Signum range was sufficiently distinguished to sit above the Vectra as a halo model. Like the Fiat Croma which shared its underpinnings, the Signum disappeared without trace.
If you’re anything like me, while you have been reading this, you’ll have been searching the classified ads for examples of these cars that you’d probably forgotten about. And, if you really are anything like me, working out how best to add one to the fleet. Those sales flops are our good fortune because lovers of the obscure can take their pick. What’s more, there’s not a single poor car among this crowd, Cadillacs excepted.
There’s some bad news and some good. The DS 9 is about to have the plug pulled, after a heroic five years battling the inevitable. That’s the bad news, by the way. The good news is that it’s about to be replaced. The DS Automobiles No.8 is a more fashionably high-riding coupé that is ready to glide silently under electric only power into your nearest DS Automobiles showroom.
This one might succeed. The manufacturer is claiming a range between charges of 750km (or 466 miles), placing it pretty much at the top of the EV endurance tree and likely to grab the attention of a modern motorist. Times are changing; new manufacturers appear every day, but there’s something reassuring about the eternal optimism of certain brands to one day break the cycle.
In the meantime, here’s to trawling Auto Trader in 2044.