Renault say it's too early to launch sub-premium brand

Chief designer, Laurens van der Acker said Renault isn’t ready to launch a premium sub-brand like Citroen has done with the DS range.

Van Der Acker who has been at Renault for just over a year now, said Renault needs time to build up the design of its key line-up of cars.

'I hope it works for Citroen because it puts exciting cars on the roads,' he said. 'But it is too early for us. I feel we need to do our homework.

'Citroen has built a family of cars and is now building on top of it. We need to build our family first.'

Van der Acker says Renault would also need to do its homework to see if creating an upscale variant of a car would make more profit than making just a remarkable single model.

'From a holistic point of view does the sum of the two – for example the C3 and the DS3 – more than making just one good car.'

Nonetheless, van der Acker admits that just as Citroen called on its heritage to make an updated DS range for the 21st century, Renault has a history too that it should resurrect in the future.

'Renault has a treasure chest of icons,' he said. 'We need to make more of that.'