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Ken Gratton9 Oct 2015
NEWS

Aircross a guide to future Citroen design

Boldly-styled SUV concept is a sign of things to come from French marque

There's nothing inscrutable about the Citroen designers behind the Aircross show car. Clearly they're proud of the end result – an SUV concept that looks strong, but not aggressive.

The company's global CEO, Linda Jackson, has already indicated the company is ready to build an SUV in the same mould as the Aircross, but the car's design team see its significance going beyond that.

Asked by motoring.com.au whether the Aircross could be a styling template for the entire Citroen range, Alexandre Malval, Citroen Design Director, answered obliquely. But there was little doubting the underlying meaning.

"We don't do show cars for free," he said. "We really want to feed our creativity with the show cars. It's a way to test some trends."

Malval says the Aircross was aimed at testing the waters for a C+ or D segment (upper-medium and large car) styling direction in the post-Cactus era.

"And we wanted to break some rules in the SUV segment. From our point of view, most of the SUVs in the market are really scripted, really aggressive, sporty... and we believe there is a way to do them differently."

Malval believes that the Aircross styling can translate to smaller cars also, and his fellow stylist, Frederic Duvernier agrees.

"I think small cars don't need any aggression," Duvernier told motoring.com.au. "You could have a very small Aircross... it would be cute."

"We believe it could work," Malval added.

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Written byKen Gratton
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