PSA bosses have revealed how they were tackling the “incredibly disappointing” opinion dealers have of Peugeot and Citroen.

The most recent Dealer Attitude Survey – winter 2015 - saw dealers score both brands below average, when asked the critical question ‘how would you rate your manufacturer overall?’. They suffered the worst decline since the summer survey, alongside Skoda, in the National Franchised Dealer Attitude study.

“Citroen’s score of 5.1 (out of 10) is the lowest for some time and has fallen from a score in line with the average to one significantly beneath,” the NFDA said.

“Peugeot’s score has for some time been beneath average but the score of 4.9 for this survey moves them to third from bottom in the table.”

Bek Hassan, Citroen UK brand director, said: “The NFDA survey results were extremely disappointing. As a result we’re talking about what can be done to address them.

“We’re putting together dealer forums to find out what the issues are, through open dialogue.”

Neil Moscrop, Peugeot UK brand director, believed a cause was the disruption of reorganisation at PSA.

“There was a reorganisation two years ago and another two years before and together with some iffy results, investors will have concerns.”

The two said 75% of the PSA UK network (185 Citroen dealers, 221 Peugeot) are profitable.

The average return on sale is 1.2% for Citroen and 1% for Peugeot.

Moscrop and Hassan stressed that the top 75% are achieving 1.5%, but the poor performance of the bottom quartile bring the average down.

 Moscrop said: “We’ve taken the new car profit per unit from £800 to above £1,200 – and have the objective to get the average RoS for the network to 1.5%.”

When asked when, he said “we’re not very far away now”.

Online sales

Moscrop declined to elaborate in much detail on Peugeot’s plans, but said it was wrong that consumers could not carry out the purchase of a car entirely online.

“PSA recognises most definitely that customers are prepared to buy online today,” he said. “We want to be in that market and providing a seamless process via a dealer, not a broker.

“Paying a deposit online and then continuing the relationship with the dealership is not much of a benefit. We were able to leave a deposit to secure car in 1998.”