Giving the lion back its roar
Peugeot design was at perhaps its lowest ebb when Gilles Vidal took over a decade ago. He tells Steve Cropley how he’s returned the French brand to aesthetic excellence
n the very day we spoke to Gilles Vidal, Peugeot’s design director for the past 10 years, it became clear that the Geneva motor show, the best-loved and most open-minded of the European salons, wouldn’t be able to recover in 2021 from its shock cancellation in March, as many had hoped.
Manufacturers, shaken by the pandemic upheaval and scared by the impending cost of another Geneva, had just told the organisers they would be unlikely to support next year’s event, which came as quite a shock. Wouldn’t the lack of Europe’s most-loved motor show, we media types wondered, curb the very design progress that people like Vidal have always championed? Surely car creators need motor shows to display
Otheir wares and justify their existence? The Frenchman’s reply came as another surprise… “Missing out on an event like Geneva – or Paris, with its one million visitors – is definitely a shame,” he says, “but I have to say it doesn’t matter all that much. Even if we never showed our concepts to anyone, they would still be amazing tools for investigating materials, colours and the sheer freedom of design.
“In any case, we now have digital communication working at a far higher level than ever before. And we can always hold Peugeot-specific events. So even without motor shows, we still have ways of showing our work to the public. Perhaps some of us will miss the physical encounter with
Vidal confidently put his own stamp on Peugeot design with the SR-1 in 2010, but he believes that car’s influence was spent years ago. Time for another rule-breaker soon, he says.
outside people, but it’s far from being a disaster.”
Vidal should know. His impressive reputation at Peugeot is founded on a bold new design philosophy he brought to the marque soon after taking on its top design job in 2010 at the comparatively young age of 38, having worked for the 12 previous years on Citroëns. His first big design statement was a seminal Peugeot concept, a never-to-be-built roadster called the SR1, which ditched the previous ‘wide-mouthed frog’ look and gave perfect visibility to an under-the-skin move by Peugeot’s engineers towards high technology and lighter weight. But in our discussion, he surprised us again by firmly consigning the SR1 to history.
“Concepts grow old very quickly,” he asserts. “A proposition like that feeds the next few years’ designs, but consumers don’t want clones that last a full design generation. Not from Peugeot, anyway. They enjoy progress. It’s true that some concepts, perhaps like the SR1, start something new. But you have to move on, and we have.”
It’s clear from our first few minutes of talking that Vidal has well and truly grown into the role of a trendsetter. His first important concept may have been good, but there’s a confidence in his manner that says what comes next will be better.
The past dozen or so production cars designed and released since Vidal was appointed have dealt easily with issues previously seen as tough hurdles for Peugeot – finding a beautiful new ‘selling’ shape for the problematic 508 saloon, making his unique i-cockpit design work (six million built and counting) and turning the 3008 and 5008 SUVS into products that rival even Audi for desirability. His confidence in the role is especially evident as he briskly bats away my next fuzzy question about identifying the latest trends in car design.
“There are as many trends as there are car brands,” he says shortly. “Our job is to embody the technology and efficiency of our particular cars and to fit them to the moral values of modern society. You’ve got to be clever at this to succeed. Design isn’t just a shallow form of communication; it has to have substance. We’re working to make Peugeot design reach into our factories, even
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to affect the way we build our cars.” How does this thirst for modernity square with the e-legend, I ask, the tech-packed, “100% autonomous” concept that speaks 17 languages but recalls the lovely lines of the 504 Coupé, whose heyday was 50 years ago? Vidal and his team called it “retro-futuristic” when they launched it at the 2018 Paris motor show. “People want enjoyment from their cars,” he explains, “and as long as we respect that, we can take our design in any direction we want. Not every car has to be a whiteboard, driving about…”
Does that mean Peugeot might contemplate a heritage model for serious production? Something along the lines of the latest Mini hatchback or Fiat 500? “It’s feasible,” Vidal allows. “The idea appeals to many customers who like old British values or dream of la dolce vita in Italy. Ideas that recognise this are clever and valid, but we’re not going to produce something like the e-legend as you saw it (see box, p51). I’m not sure we would do something like the Mini or the 500, either, although we’re certainly thinking about what we could do.”
Vidal approves of the retro cast to designs like the Mini and 500 for the way it reassures car buyers to take the step of moving into a new era, such as the electrification age. “We must find ways to associate positivity with the future,” he says. “Look at science-fiction movies today: they tend to be dark and threatening, entertaining but terrible. Never warm and human and positive. We need to find clever ways to make positive associations with new cars, but we’re still working.”
Following Peugeot’s success with the i-cockpit (it gets half the negative feedback of other aspects of modern cars, according to Vidal), he says he’s actively looking at getting rid of dashboards altogether – an idea made possible by the changes electrification will bring. “We can put airbags in the roof,” says Vidal, “and can make the structural changes in our new electrified platforms, so it’s feasible. We have all the bits and pieces, the
“Retro-futuristic” concepts such as the e-legend, which recalls the 504 Coupé, must aim to give confidence in the future, says Vidal. Unlike today’s science fiction, he wants them to reflect “positivity”.