Citroën renames self to Zitrön

Few companies would ever think of celebrating their 100th anniversary by changing the name of their primary brand to something different. Not Citroën, though: the French carmaker has just published a video where it pledged to become “Zitrön” for the sake of all German speakers out there. Not for real, granted, but a little self-irony never hurts.

It is not the brand name itself, but the diacritical marks (specifically, the dots over the ‘ë’) that cause the confusion. The matter is, diacritics are often used in French, German and many other languages, but every language describes its own way to read them. As a result, you would be very lucky to read a foreign word with all those dots and dashes and get it right on the first attempt.

Wolfgang Schlimme, Managing Director Zitrön Germany, went as far as to record a tongue-in-cheek video where he announced the re-branding. Watch it to find out what kind of difficulties the company encountered while trying to instruct its staff and dealerships on the new branding.

In reality, though, renaming a successful car marque is something that hardly ever happens in the industry. Tiny adjustments are possible, but that is about it.