A week ago we brought you speculative news over the future of both GM and PSA Peugeot Citroen in a flagging European market and how a closer strategic alliance between the two companies was likely. Now, in a press release out of Detroit, Paris and Resselsheim (we love them covering their collective backsides like that) we can confirm that the two companies are indeed going ahead with four new development platforms.
The press release states that in terms of the master agreement signed back in February 29, (does anyone else think that’s a less than auspicious date to have signed an agreement on?) the alliance partners have selected four vehicle projects and confirmed the next steps in joint purchasing organisation. What we want to know is what the four common vehicle platform development projects are.
The first is a joint program for a compact multi-purpose MPV for Opel and a compact crossover-utility vehicle (CUV) for Peugeot. The second is a joint MPV in the small car segment for Opel and Citroen. The third is an upgraded low CO2 small car for Opel, Peugeot and Citroën. Finally, the fourth is a joint venture in mid-size cars for Opel, Peugeot and Citroen.
The alliance aims to launch the first vehicles by the end of 2016. All four projects will be developed combining the best platform architectures and technologies from each partner. Within the next five years the automakers plan on achieving $2 billion annual savings thanks to this collaboration.
If we might be so bold and try our hand at predicting how these platform architectures might best be shared between the new alliance, we think Opel’s very tidy Meriva can be used as the basis for the proposed Peugeot CUV and Citroen MPV. The Peugeot 208 can be shared with Opel as their next small city car (the next Corsa perhaps) and finally GM can share the award winning Vauxhall / Opel Insignia platform in the mid-size sedan collaboration.
It sounds like General Motors are doing more sharing than the French at this stage and are probably the more dominant partner in this alliance, but we’ll see how the strategy develops along the road to new models in 2016.
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