Citroën’s TV ad for the new C5 – on sale here in the UK from 2 April – is intended to polarise views.
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“We want to give people a jolt with it,” said Ian Hughes, fleet and marketing director for Citroën UK.
The tag line is ‘Unmistakeably German. Made in France’ and the ad is already claimed to be a huge hit on YouTube with more than 80,000 viewings in the last two weeks, said Hughes. “We want people to consider this car.”
When they do, they might also consider the vastly improved forecast for resale values after three years/60,000 miles.
At 36.4%, the new C5’s residual value is second in its class to the VW Passat and ahead of the Mazda 6, Honda Accord and Toyota Avensis and a 36% improvement on the previous C5 which stood at 26.4%, according to CAP Monitor.
“We’ve worked really hard over the last two years to improve the residual values,” said Hughes. The actual prices that were being paid for cars at three years were often higher than those that were forecast. “The forecasts never really caught up with reality,” he said.
This process started with C4 Picasso, C4 and C-Crosser. “The C5 is the latest car to benefit from our efforts.
“One of the concerns of the forecasters was our cashback strategy which we still use on our smaller cars because we think it is a very transparent way of selling in the retail market.”
But it won’t be used on the C4 range, C5 and C-Crosser.
The best-selling C5 model is expected to be the 2.0HDI VTR+ at GBP18,495.
