“When you see the current situation of the world, I think everyone needs a smile on our face,” said Citroën’s Antoine Gaillot-Drevon in sharing his latest design, a reborn 2CV.
I couldn’t agree more. But I also feel this comment exposes an uncomfortable truth: that a trend for retro design is a signifier of an unhealthy and unhappy society.
Citroën, it’s fair to assume, felt compelled to invoke a beloved past product because Renault has done so phenomenally well in what was a sluggish market by nostalgically recreating the 5 – and has continued to do with a new 4, a new Twingo, a new 8 Gordini and now a new Espace. That success may explain why we also saw a new retro Alpine and a new retro Peugeot at the Paris motor show.
The new 2CV is a great bit of design: cute, friendly, colourful, respectful of its inspiration but not shackled to it. But the main reason why people love any of these cars is because it reminds them of those old cars, and by extension the periods to which they belonged.
A happier time, they think, a simpler time. That is of course not the full truth of the matter. They are peering back through a haze. Yes, the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s, ’80s or ’90s will have been particularly happy parts of various people’s lives, but nostalgia is a powerful drug, stripping away the worries, fears and stresses we struggled against then while purifying and emphasising the fun, romance and hope that we found in escaping them. Naturally, therefore, nostalgia becomes more popular when times are harder. It’s a crutch, a comfort blanket.
It’s not just the automotive industry that is showing the telltale signs of this malaise: the kids are wearing the exact kind of clothes the kids wore in the early 2000s and the top 40 pop charts are continually filled with familiar old classics.
European economies are still struggling to recover from the disaster of 2008. We have suffered from rampant inflation and cost of living crises. We were thrown into a deadly pandemic. Politics has become ever more divided, polarised and vitriolic both here and in the once reassuring presence of America. An unfamiliar new global superpower has risen in China. And now artificial intelligence threatens to take our jobs and, by its creators’ own admission, possibly kill us all within the next decade. Who could blame anyone for wanting to run back into the familiar past? How could anyone be expected to look toward the immediate future with excitement and optimism?
The 2CV emerged in the immediate post-war period, when times were incredibly tough and uncertain for Europeans – more so, indeed, than they are now. But people also had a sense of an opportunity to build back better, to banish the problems of the past. They wanted to look to the future, because the future could only be better than the past. The 2CV was an exciting, novel offering, and even if the average French person couldn’t have afforded one right then, they felt hope that they would be able to one day.
Now there is a sense of listlessness, stagnation and indirection about our society. It’s hard to imagine how a novel, future-facing car would look for us. Perhaps the only real answer is a car defined and controlled by AI – but that is a prospect that most people find scary and uninspiring, not exciting and hopeful.
It can be argued that retro design is a way to remind customers of the vast heritage that European companies have, amid an onslaught of Chinese arrivals offering better value for money. But that is no real justification: to survive into the future, no company can simply lean on its past. Indications of confidence about progress are vital.
In no way do I mean to attack Citroën here: its designers have undeniably fulfilled their goal to make people smile, just as Renault’s designers did with the 5, and that should be celebrated when there's so much negativity around. But I do mean to say that the more popular retro design becomes, the more worrying the trend becomes.
Someone needs to find a way to make people smile by pointing to a hope-inspiring future – and urgently.