Autocar’s vision for a new DS 3, inspired by the original
French brand taps spirit of original 2010 DS 3 for new premium supermini, due within months
DS will shift its focus to smaller, cheaper models following the launch of the new No8 and No7 SUVs – and will soon give a “concrete” look at its plans for a successor to the DS 3 supermini, inspired by the 2010 original.
The French brand is in the midst of a rapid-fire renewal of its line-up, having not launched any new models for four years prior to the No8 late last year, and with that rakish SUV flagship now in dealerships – along with the refreshed No4 hatchback and, soon, the mid-sized No7 – CEO Xavier Peugeot has strongly hinted the next priority is launching a premium city car to rival the Renault 5 and Mini Cooper.
Asked about a timeframe for the next-generation DS 3 – the current car having been on sale for seven years – Peugeot suggested an unveiling could come within the coming months. “Having launched No8, then No4 and now No7, we’ve launched quite big-sized cars – so you understand where our thoughts are going to continue this development, and we will be able to show you some concrete elements in quite a near future,” he said.
He said DS plans to “shake” the small car market with a model that gives “a good balance between being iconic and in line with our roots”, and rational commercial appeal – in keeping with the brand’s ambitious growth plans.
The Paris motor show in October is a likely venue for a new DS to make its debut – possibly in concept form – but Peugeot would only say that was a “very clever” suggestion when asked for confirmation.
As previously reported by Autocar, the next DS 3 is tipped to take heavy design influence from the first-gen car, which was launched in 2010 as the first model from Citroën’s new DS sub-brand – before it was hived off as a marque in its own right in 2015.
Citing the strong commercial success of the Mk1 – which rode lower and was more overtly ‘sporting’ in its positioning than today’s SUV-shaped Mk2 – DS designer Thierry Metroz recently said: “We want to take inspiration from the Gen1, but in a very futuristic way. And what I don’t want to do is retro design, but we’d like to keep some design elements which are very strong from the Gen1.”
Peugeot doubled down on this rhetoric, explaining that there’s more flexibility to draw inspiration from the past on smaller cars than larger ones. Notably, DS’s sibling brand Peugeot is employing a similar tactic for its own next-gen supermini, the 208 – which will be closely related to the DS 3 underneath – by channelling the spirit of the 1980s 205.
“If you look at this kind of ‘retro’ – this capacity to start from an iconic product such as the Mini or the R5 – we see that the biggest successes when car makers try to regenerate these iconic products were based on small cars rather than large ones, so that’s something we’ve been working on,” said Peugeot.
He went so far as to suggest that, in this context, the Mk1 DS 3 is as influential as the classic saloons that defined the brand’s early years: “If we look at our portfolio, the DS from 1945 was iconic, the SM was iconic, and the more recent DS 3 was also iconic – these kinds of thoughts are in our mind.”
The brand’s intention to tap into its heritage more overtly with future products will not, however, extend to a production version of 2024’s striking SM Tribute concept – which reimagined the eponymous V6-engined sports saloon for the electric era – because the role of flagship has been filled.
“The initial SM was to me an iconic product, but you understand that it is a big car – highly iconic, no doubt – but I joined this brand just one year ago and I was quickly connected to the launch of another big car, the No8,” said Peugeot.
“And we’ve got No7, so it’s quite complicated to give priority to another big car in all the work we’ve been doing – but I agree that when we’ve got such strong roots, such a strong DNA, we should ensure that we can extract the key elements and put them into all of the product launches.”
He did not write off the prospect of one day reviving the SM in some form, but said it was “not a top priority” for the brand.
Peugeot also confirmed that the No8 will be the largest and most expensive model DS launches: “We must play our premium cards – so there is always a pricing impact – but we also need to do volumes, so we should get the balance right, and the priority is not to put in the range a car which is larger than the No8.”
He also said there is “no need to go as low” as a notional No1 or No2, so the No3 will be the smallest DS model.
There will not be a No5, either, as French fashion house Chanel has the rights to that name for its iconic perfume range, leaving just ‘No6’ as the final potential gap in the DS line-up – one that could possibly be filled by a model that’s positioned between the No4 hatch and No7 crossover.