PSA/Peugeot-Citroen has opened a design studio in Shanghai to adapt European models and develop new ones for the Chinese market.

 

It is PSA's first locally staffed studio outside the automaker's design headquarters in Velizy, near Paris.

 

The Chinese styling center launched in November 2008 with a staff of 20 locally recruited designers and three expatriates from PSA's principal design studio, said Jean-Pierre Ploue, PSA director of styling.

 

The objective is to ensure that Peugeot and Citroen cars bearing a "Made in China" label conform to local tastes.

 

The Shanghai design team has already begun adapting Citroen's C5 sedan for local production later this year. Designers will increase the use of external chrome, to add signs of "perceived wealth" to the car.

 

"With PSA boosting the Asian product plan, it seemed indispensable that we have a design center to simultaneously adapt European models and create new products that are specifically Chinese," Ploue said.

 

The studio is also working on new color schemes and materials. Improving interior comfort, particularly in the back seat, is a key task.

 

"In China, the person who buys the car is usually sitting in the back, because he has a driver. So we have to be sure that comfort elements like cup holders or extra leg and head room migrate from the front seat to the back," Ploue said.

 

PSA has operated joint venture manufacturing operations with Dongfeng Motor Corp. since 1992. The French carmaker's China sales fell 12.7 percent, to 180,800 units in 2008.