Apple Inc. has a lot to answer for. Obviously there were desirable phones and there were upmarket products before the iPhone, but it’s by far the best modern example of the way companies approach the marketing of their wares today.

Made in China for a few pounds and sold to you for hundreds, the iPhone is the handset of paupers and kings. It is everyman’s premium product. Cool as ice; common as. And it’s the reason why Ford has scrapped the ‘Titanium Sport X’ trim from the Mondeo lineup.

In its place comes the Mondeo Vignale and it’s a name that will soon become synonymous with the upper echelons of Ford’s bigger passenger car ranges, starting with the Mondeo and soon appearing on S‐MAX, Kuga and Focus, and a reaction to the increasing pre‐eminence of premium brands in the car market.

But Vignale is not just a trim level, it’s “a high series execution [of the Ford brand], the ultimate expression coupled with an enhanced ownership experience,” says Jon Wellsman, Ford of Britain’s director of customer service.

The company is adamant that it’s not “going upmarket”, and that even without the Vignale brand the Mondeo has attracted class leading – and premium brand beating – residuals. This, it says, is more thanks to a decision to reduce the number of short cycle, cash‐burning daily rental and internal staff sales from around 6,000 per year with the outgoing Mondeo to 2,000.

And with around 30% of true fleet Mondeo sales last time around being Titanium X Sport (top‐of‐the‐line) models, Ford sees the shift to Vignale, with its “enhanced” purchase and ownership experience, as a way of keeping existing customers with the brand who are on their second, possibly third Mondeo in a row.

So, it’s not competing with BMW and Audi as such, but instead giving the average SME middle manager a reason not to jump ship. But also, you know, allowing them to spend over €45,000 on a Mondeo. There’s profit in all that extra equipment.

The car itself is classic mutton dressed‐as‐Wagyu‐beef: the Vignale dashboard is leather, the paint is thicker and the chrome is more extensive – but it’s backed up by the sort of customer care hitherto unseen from any Ford dealership.

It includes the establishment of 55 nationwide ‘Ford Stores’ whose staff are trained specifically in the ways of Vignale. They include special customer care managers and fancy waiting areas – areas a driver can avoid entirely if needs be, because the Vignale service includes free delivery and collection for servicing, and a single, named point of contact for them, who’s always on call.

“It’s about becoming a professional and contemporary retailer, so as you would go and buy your iPhone from a beautiful looking store with great service, we want our Ford dealerships to be comparable with the other class‐leading retailers,” says Wellsman. “We’ve taken our inspiration not from Vauxhall or Peugeot but from what’s going no on the high street and what very successful other retailer brands are doing.”

Plus, the Ford Store concept will be extended to Focus RS and Mustang owners, giving Ford showrooms a twotier class setup and helping to justify the investment.

It’s not just Ford. Modernising the retail experience is something that Volvo is at too, recently announcing its intention to calmly revolutionise all its showrooms with a comfortable “premium living room” vibe by 2020. 

Which brings us onto DS – a brand that Citroën believes will compete with Audi and BMW. Recently Citroën erected a big tent in the middle of Paris to celebrate ‘DS Week’ – a display, open to the public, of all things DS and ostensibly the official launch of ‘DS Automobiles’ as a standalone premium brand. The company prefers the term “avant garde” to premium because it’s more, well, French.

In a Toyota/Lexus type separation, Citroën wants DS to become independent, and by 2020 DS Automobiles will have launched six new models in Europe, most of them coming to the UK and a couple of which will be of the extremely on‐trend premium SUV variety.

“Clearly, margins on premium cars are greater than on mainstream product,” says John Handcock, head of communications for DS Automobiles (and also Citroën) in the UK.

The ability to make more money out of each unit, without hugely more expensive production costs, while higher residual values reflect the status of the cars among used buyers is the holy grail for volume brands.

The creation of DS Automobiles is one third of an overall PSA Peugeot Citroën company restructure that will see it more aligned with the Volkswagen Group – pitching different brands at different, but complementary, customer bases. A strategy that has seen Volkswagen Group become the world’s second biggest carmaker.

So while DS tackles the upper end, Citroën itself stays with the mainstream (the Koreans and the Vauxhalls), and Peugeot separates the two, itself having moved upmarket to become a ‘upper mainstream’ kind of rival to the Volkswagen brand itself.

And while the ‘Apple effect’ (or the “democratisation of premium”, as Ford’s

Wellman puts it) goes some way to explaining the desire for car companies to move upmarket it’s actually our car buying patterns that are really forcing change.

There are two possible explanations: one, that the ever‐improving ‘value’ cars (those from Korea, for example) are pushing the likes of Ford and Citroën upwards to a more aspirational, higher‐cost product.

Or two, that the traditional premium manufacturers are diversifying to the extent that it’s they who form the biggest threat to the traditional mainstream.

Ford flat denies that the former is having any impact, while the latter is the way Matt Friedman of automotive analyst CAP sees it: “The premium brands are colonising the entire industry,” he says. “Now you walk into a BMW showroom or an Audi showroom and it’s absolutely full of everything, from superminis all the way up.

“If you are Ford and you traditionally relied on Fiesta and Escort, the lower segments, you’ve suddenly got to compete with these people who’ve just come down from on high and started stealing your lunch.

“The British are quite premium brand conscious. Given the choice most customers would aspire to own a premium branded car over a mainstream, and now they have that opportunity. They will pay the extra, and they’ll certainly pay the extra in the used market.”

What’s difficult is quantifying a move to premium in pure profit terms. In the UK the Citroën DS3, for example, outsells the Citroën C3 considerably, but the DS4 and DS5 models are slower sellers.

So we have to look beyond the UK to make sense of Citroën’s plan. In 2012 Citroën moved into China, partnering with Dongfeng to make Citroëns, and with Chang’an Auto Group to make DS models – two separate entities into one massive market with no historical brand prejudices.

The size of that market means that, ultimately, the UK is a single cross‐stitch in a lucrative French‐Chinese tapestry; DS is a standalone luxury brand in China, so Citroën might as well do it here too.

And if there’s the temptation to get a little sniffy about DS Automotive’s chances of ever establishing itself as a premium brand, CAP’s Friedman goes back to Volkswagen Group.

“The test case is Audi, which took decades of very, very sustained work across every facet of business – the product, the styling, the engineering, motorsport, quality – it had to do everything consistently for something like 20 years in order to move itself securely into the premium space.”

Sustained work is what it will take for Citroën’s avant garde gamble (and, to a lesser extent, Ford’s premium one) to pay off.

Premium flops four upmarket failures

Ford and Citroën’s upmarket ambition isn’t especially new, and history shows us that it’s a journey fraught with difficulties. So here are five car manufacturers that tried to chase the premium pound in the past and failed.

Maybach

In 1997, Mercedes‐Benz revived the 90‐year‐old Maybach name for a pair of ultra‐luxury concept cars, the Maybach 57 and 62, based obviously on the S‐Class but at three times the price. Having stated its intention to sell 2,000 Maybachs per year, in 11 years Mercedes managed to sell just 3,000 in total. The whole project was cancelled in 2013, although the name was revived this year for a range‐topping S‐Class.

Lagonda

Like Maybach, Lagonda was formed early in the 20th Century but sat doing nothing for decades before being revived by a big brand in catastrophic fashion – but under Aston Martin, the Lagonda revival lasted days rather than years. When Aston announced it was planning something big for Lagonda during the 2009 Geneva Motor Show, in strict proportional terms that turned out to be true, but the massive Lagonda Concept 4×4 was an absolute monstrosity. Both the car and the name were quickly ensconced back into the bottom drawer of Aston’s Gaydon factory.

Renault

At around the turn of this century, the company released the Avantime coupé and Vel Satis luxury hatchback. Expensive and with challenging styling, they both flopped – the Avantime lasting just two years in production.

Edsel

Ford has attempted to go upmarket before, and in doing so created perhaps the most famous commercial flop of all time. The Edsel brand, born in the late ‘50s, was supposed to sit above the Ford brand but below Mercury and Lincoln in the company’s product portfolio. Unfortunately, both the first car – the Edsel Corsair – and the brand positioning were poorly judged, confusing American buyers and forcing Ford to write off a $400m investment – the equivalent of $4bn today.