A few months ago, Citroën had high hopes for Turkey, with the ambition to become one of the most important brands by 2025 and to make Turkey its third global market. But 2023 is such a successful year for the brand that it intends to achieve these goals at the end of the year with record sales.
Indeed, at the beginning of the year, the brand's objective was to sell just over 49,000 units for the whole of 2023, a figure already significantly higher than in 2022. But there is no denying that the brand will do significantly better than expected, as at the end of September, Citroën had already sold more than 45,000 units, allowing it to increase its ambition to 60,000 units sold for the whole year.
Selen Alkım, General Manager of Citroën Türkiye, says: "At the end of September, we are already at the level of 45,000 units; we still have 3 months ahead of us. We seem to have passed the 60,000 mark. We set a target of 49,250 units at the beginning of the year, but we thought that the big weight would come from the C4 X model, which we launched at the beginning of the year. We set a target of 10,000 units for the C4 X at the beginning of the year. We want to increase this by 20 percent and end the year with 12,000 units. Given the popularity of the model in Turkey, we predicted that we could achieve more units. We insisted and persuaded the Spanish factory to produce more. Now, at our request, the factory has moved to a third shift from September. In short, Turkey asked for it, the factory in Spain went to third shift".
The C4X has been very successful on the Turkish market, so much so that in October, with more than 1,600 units sold, it came eleventh in sales and fourth in its segment. This success has enabled Citroën to record very strong growth in Turkey since the beginning of the year, but above all to become the brand's third largest market two years earlier than originally planned for the end of 2025.
With the imminent arrival of the renewed C3 and C3 Aircross, Citroën will have two new products capable of achieving excellent sales figures in Turkey, especially as they will be offered at affordable prices, as in Europe. Turkey is therefore well placed to become Citroën's third world market in the coming years, especially if the success of the C4 X continues and exceeds the brand's expectations.