Peugeot 301 to spearhead worldwide growth

December 31, 2012: Peugeot’s aggressive dash for sales outside Western Europe depends squarely on the success of its new middleweight Peugeot 301 saloon, according to its new brand CEO, 38-year-old Maxime Picat (pictured below), who replaced the previous incumbent Vincent Rambaud earlier this year.

Loss-making Peugeot, heavily criticised in France for being too parochial, achieved only 30 percent sales in non-Western countries in 2010. But the figure rose to 42 percent in 2011, largely because of the contribution of its Chinese joint venture with DongFeng Motor — led at the time by Picat, a fluent Cantonese speaker.

With Picat now running the whole company, Peugeot’s target for sales outside the West is 50 percent by 2015, and 60 per cent by 2020. The 301, a big-booted 4.4-metre-long saloon based on a lengthened and widened 208 platform, will lead the expansion into Turkey, Central and Eastern Europe, Russia, Ukraine, the Middle East and some Latin American markets. Then, in a second phase, the car will be launched and later manufactured in China.

The new model’s four-door design is crucial to non-Western sales, Maxime Picat claims. Whereas in Europe only two percent of new cars in this size class are saloons, they account for 74 percent in the Middle East, 64 percent in Asia and 50 percent in both Eastern Europe and Africa, and the trend shows no sign of declining.

STEVE CROPLEY, AUTOCAR UK