Only six months after its launch in January 2019, the PSA Group's new Citroen C5 Aircross SUV has already accumulated over 50,000 sales.

In Europe, the new C5 Aircross SUV has played a big part in Citroen’s commercial momentum, recording the strongest growth of the top 12 brands in Europe (30 countries) in the first half of the year. In the UK, the sales mix has been robust with almost 50 percent of registrations on top of the range Flair+ versions.

This volume makes it the brand’s third best-selling passenger vehicle in the first half of the year (after the C3 Supermini and C3 Aircross Compact SUV), a trend that is also mirrored in the UK.

In the first half of 2019, Citroen’s SUVs (C3 Aircross Compact SUV + New C5 Aircross SUV) represent almost one in four brand sales worldwide as well as almost one in three passenger car sales in the UK.

C5 Aircross is India-bound
On April 3, 2019, the top management of the French carmaker took the covers off the C5 Aircross SUV in Chennai. The C5 Aircross, which is based on Groupe PSA’s EMP2 platform, will be the company’s first launch in India as a BS VI-compliant product and will go on sale before the end of 2020, with annual production capacity of 100,000 units from the Thiruvallur plant in Tamil Nadu in Phase 1.

The PSA Group is targeting a high level of 90 percent localisation. What will help the company achieve this is PSA’s two joint ventures in Tamil Nadu with the CK Birla Group for vehicle assembly at Thiruvallur, and a powertrain plant with AVTEC, which was inaugurated on November 22, 2018. The initial manufacturing capacity of this state-of-the-art plant will be about 300,000 transmissions per annum and 200,000 units of BS VI-compliant engines. The plant will manufacture gearboxes in Phase I to support both the India project as well as supplying Groupe PSA needs.

Also read: Citroen to launch C5 Aircross SUV in India, targets 2% market share by 2024

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