DS No8

2 minutes reading

Friday, 10 Jul 2026 07:00 0 3 autotech

Could this be an all-electric, high-rise Citroën DS for the 21st century?

May 2026 was a significant month for the Stellantis automotive group. Most pertinently it brought the announcement of the entity’s ‘Fastlane’ plan: more than £50 billion of investment funding, to be stretched across the whole of the global business. Sounds good, right? Not necessarily.Exactly how that might have been bad news for any of the brands that it will touch upon may not be immediately obvious; but, at the same time, the Stellantis management also announced a new three-tier hierarchy of the group’s brands. Those tiers haven’t, for the time being, ‘cut’ any of the marques altogether. But they now recognise four primarily important ‘global’ Stellantis brands, namely Fiat, Jeep, Peugeot and Ram; five second-tier ‘regional’ brands, which are Alfa Romeo, Chrysler, Citroën, Dodge and Opel; and, finally, the rest. That leaves the maker of this road test’s subject – the DS Automobiles Nº8 – with an ignominious clarity about the inferiority of its position relative to its sibling brands. It is to be a third-tier ‘speciality’ brand, one managed directly by Citroën. Will narrower international horizons and wing-clipped plans for growth follow? We can only wait to find out.It was only September last year when DS was telling us of its renewed plans to better establish itself among Europe’s premium elite, after a conspicuously quiet few years. The Nº8 – DS’s new flagship all-electric crossover, intended to give it greater credibility in among rivals from the likes of Audi, BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Polestar – was shown off as the great catalyst for that effort. It has now arrived to brave the full scrutiny of the road test microscope.