Citroen will use the ELO concept to bring back the MPV

Good news! A friendly-looking, practical, Citroen-badged MPV will return! Sort of!

Citroen boss Xavier Chardon confirmed to TopGear.com that the French carmaker with a long history in friendly-looking, practical, Citroen-badged MPVs is looking at how to bring the best bits of the brilliant ELO concept into some sort of production life.

“It’ll be the inspiration for what could be the future of the MPV,” he told TopGear.com. “What we call MPV 2.0. You will never see it in this shape, because there are too many restrictions, but there will be some inspiration.”

Those restrictions primarily take the form of a rear-wheel-drive layout, central driving position, and little winglets for mirrors. And the fact it’s an orange concept with mad wheels, a smiley face and a huge glasshouse. Much as we’d love to see exactly that, y’know, ‘concept car’.

And yet Citroen design boss Pierre Leclercq and his team want to bring as much of that car into reality as possible. “Let’s say that there are many things in that car that we will try and put on the road. It’s an everyday fight, like every project.

“The beauty of our group is we have synergies. But we have to make sure we create the right products for the right brands,” he added.

Chardon was also keen to point out it’s still too soon to talk about this ELO-inspired box, but did agree with TopGear.com’s assertion that the MPV is a thoroughly good and underserved bodyshape.

“I think so,” he said. “We all remember when the first Qashqai was introduced and was the trendsetter for SUVs. Today you have more than 50 per cent of the European market that is SUV, so it’s time [for something else].

“When you have a trend that becomes mainstream, you will have other trends that appear, and one could be an MPV. You have to twist is a bit, and this is what we are thinking of,” he added.

Hopefully the twist isn’t ‘here’s another amorphous electric blob’. TopGear.com put it to Leclercq that despite the talk of electricity freeing up car design to be braver/more experimental, all we seem to have largely been fed is the same, melty, homogenous aero-honed globule. But as a crossover.

“My hope with ELO is to say ‘hey, with electric technology, let’s break our format and let’s gain 10in’. Because 10in is something you give to the rear passengers. Or you make the car 10in shorter. But there’s massive room we should be able to gain from electric technology,” Leclercq said.

“The problem is that, look at Norway – almost full electric. Go to the south of Italy – only ICE. So we have to have a certain flexibility for our customers and the platforms have to have flexibility. When you try to have that flexibility, it’s very difficult to revolutionise the car industry.

“It will come, but a bit slower,” he added.

Leclercq’s already told TopGear.com about how he hates the word ‘cute’ when it comes to fun car design – speaking about the 2CV – and how not everything has to be sporty and aggressive.

“Doesn’t mean it has to look boring,” he said. “We try to simplify everything. We try to make sure we don’t have overcomplicated design. We try in the proportions to have lightweight cars.”

Like we mentioned up top about the ELO’s giant glasshouse, Leclercq uses the same example. “I’m always asking the designers to push the beltline down for many reasons. More glass means it’s lighter visually.

“Also, your kids in the back can see something on the road. I think too many cars are going so crazy with so much wedge.”

Though, we’re all here for a slightly mad, wedgy, radically proportioned Citroen MPV…