"I love collaborating beyond automotive"

In what was a fairly frantic visit to Velizy owing to ever reliable train times and the realities of a global press launch, Car Design News managed to grab a few minutes with Citroen's design boss Pierre Leclercq. The busiest of busy men on the day, he remained as enthusiastic as ever and with the ELO concept just a few metres away, why wouldn't he be. 

Press shots shared in advance gave us a reasonable idea of how this concept would look, but in the metal it is far more planted and, dare we say, has some stance about it. In this interview he doubles down on the 'inside out ' approach to design and how the team drew on ideas from the brand's heritage. 

Car Design News: We saw with the Ami and Oli that you guys like to experiment and try new things. And this is certainly an experiment! How does it feel seeing it on the stand here?

Pierre Leclercq: It's a great day, of course, because it's a been quite an intense project. With ‘experiment’ you are using the right word, because we see the car as a laboratory of ideas. Now, if you think about it, there's nothing too crazy because we always have in mind that we would like to influence a car in production. 

This car, like the Oli, is a vision of where we want to go in terms of design, but is also really working perfectly with the brand values of Citroen. Today, not only in the car industry, but especially in a group of 14 brands [like Stellantis], you have to make sure that you're really focused on the things you should do.

CDN: You can't blur too many lines or tread on other brands’ toes, can you?

PL: Absolutely right.

CDN: What sort of timeframe was there for the ELO? I never know what to expect these days – sometimes it's two months, sometimes it's two years.

PL: I would say between one and a half and two years.

CDN: And this was done mostly digitally, I presume. Was there clay involved?

PL: We're only digital now, but of course you make models to control – you have to. We made two proportion models and then that's it. What was very interesting – because for me it's so important – this car started from an interior package. Through this process you are building blocks, you sit on the blocks, and you start.

CDN: Did it genuinely start from an interior? Because we hear this a lot. It’s difficult to tell sometimes whether that is just a nice marketing story…

PL: It absolutely did, and that’s not the case at all here. This way of working is really dear to me. Whether an exterior is built around an interior or in parallel, it doesn't mean you cannot start to have a couple of ideas around the interior first.

CDN: And what was the goal with this interior?

PL: It’s really important that an interior is at least is very functional. Here we were trying something that is quite radical in terms of interior space in a very short car. It’s only 4.1 meters, about the same as a C3.

We have these three seats in the back, and then we wanted to create this huge space between the people in the back and the front. We believe that in a car of this size, not everyone wants to have seven or eight people in the car. It gets cramped. We felt it would be better to have four people with a lot of space as the starting point. But we have those two little extra seats that can be added either side [of the central driver’s seat] for the kids who want to come and drive next to Mama or Papa.

CDN: It is a very fun concept and, in the best way, there is this French eccentricity to it – the single connection point on the steering wheel, the fold out chairs for outdoor seating. Did you actively explore Citroen’s quirky heritage here?

PL: Yes, that’s right. It's a great observation. It's very complicated today as the brand is over a century old, so we have to ask: what really belongs to us? It's tough to find certain things that if you put them in a car, it's like, “that’s Citroen.” But the mono spoke steering wheel is really something that belongs to us (from the DS) and we wanted to bring it back in this concept. We want to bring back in production as well, actually.

The seats that we remove from the interior of course reminds everyone of the 2CV, so that was a nice nod to the past too. Fortunately we worked with Decathlon for this concept and we had systems that allowed us to do that. It’s great to be able to bring a couple of things like that on top of a philosophy that is, for me, the most interesting part of the exercise here. It's a philosophy that is really 200% Citroen.

CDN: How was that collaboration with Decathlon. It’s the first time you’ve ever worked together, and it wasn’t on a piece of co-branded merch but a full-size working concept car…

PL: You know, I almost had the feeling that we're like twin siblings. Because Decathlon makes incredible innovations. Not with expensive technologies, just perfectly designed products. I could name Ikea as well, but they're not French and I think we're closer to Decathlon anyway. But brands like this inspire us. We want to talk to them. They were interested and we worked really, really well with them from the start.

It was also super interesting because they work differently to us, although we are both very customer focused. We learned a lot and we managed to use their experience around accessories and innovations and materials, but also just a load of really good ideas. Sometimes in the car industry you shouldn't be a specialist in everything. So having people like that on board made this concept so much better.

CDN: So working with a non-automotive partner gave you a fresh approach and changed the way you considered certain features?

PL: Yes, I'm a big believer in these kind of collaborations outside of the car industry.