Peugeot plans to launch DS brand in US after 2020

Tue, 07 Oct 2014

Want to get your hands on a new French car? If you live in the United States, you're pretty much out of luck. Mainstream French automakers like Renault, Peugeot and Citroën don't compete in the US marketplace. However, American buyers may get some French flavor in a few years' time in the form of DS.

For those unfamiliar, DS is a brand under the umbrella of Peugeot SA. Until recently it existed as a sub-brand of the Citroën division, but is now being spun off into its own unit, with its own products and aspirations – and those include the US marketplace. This according to Yves Bonnefont, the newly named CEO of the DS brand and top lieutenant of PSA chief Carlos Tavares. "We want to make DS a global premium brand," Bonnefont revealed to Automotive News Europe at the Paris Motor Show where it unveiled the concept pictured above. "And you cannot be global without the US." It would likely take until after 2020 to enact the plan, however, closing out three decades since Peugeot withdrew from the US market in 1991.

PSA Peugeot Citroën ranks among the few largest automakers in Europe, the top ten largest in the world, and certainly one of the largest that does not participate in the North American market. The company recently underwent a shift in ownership and management, bringing the French government and Chinese automaker Dongfeng on board and naming a new slate of top executives. Among the many steps the new ownership and management have taken is to separate the DS line from the Citroën brand.

By Noah Joseph