Citroen e-Mehari by Courreges Concept (2016)

Citroen e-Mehari by Courreges Concept

Some 50 years after Méhari appeared on the scene in May 1968, two visionary french Brands teamed up on an exciting project: Citroën e-Mehari by Courrèges concept car. It's based on Citroën e-Mehari, unveiled in December 2015, a car inspired by its no less revolutionary forebear. Citroën e-Mehari is an all-electric four-seater cabriolet. It's fun, modern, environment-friendly, and eminently true to the values of creativity, freedom and optimism that Citroën has been advancing since nearly a century ago.

Very similar values are held by french fashion House Courrèges, whose modern, innovative creations have always radiated brightness and optimism. Courrèges revolutionized the fashion world of the sixties and seventies, just like Citroën revolutionized the motoring world with its legendary Méhari, released in 1968. Both share the spirits of freedom, youth and creativity. Courrèges, like Citroën, is a Brand driven by free-thinking visionaries.

This realization prompted Citroën to approach Courrèges with a project to sublimate new e-Mehari model into an exclusive and luminous creation. It would be fashionable, playful and electric, a trend-setter in every sense of the term, naturally enough given the background and reputation of this emblematic Brand. Courrèges bosses Jacques Bungert and Frédéric Torloting, who "believe very strongly in the crossover between different creative fields", took up the idea and called in their design studio, which would liaise with the Citroën Design Centre to run development work on the concept car.

With this project, both partners are expressing a desire to invent new designs, using materials of tomorrow to come up with works that combine outstanding beauty with practical usability. It's a quest for modernity, for a radical departure from classic norms, but firmly rooted in real life as it is lived, with a touch of sportslike elation and a strong sense of poetry. The partnership would yield a concept car abounding in energy, bathed in light, open to the world outside, and powered by an innovative lithium metal polymer battery.

Citroën e-Mehari styled by Courrèges, White light

Citroën e-Mehari is an electric car with strong personality traits of fun, freshness and colour. Because it was designed from the outset to be inherently fashionable, Citroën had no difficulty giving Courrèges complete freedom to deliver its own interpretation of the car. The result is Citroën e-Mehari styled by Courrèges concept car, with its play of colours and materials focused on the colour White, true to both Méhari spirit and the inimitable Courrèges style.

Citroën e-Mehari styled by Courrèges keeps e-Mehari door motif, with its grooves harking back affectionately to the corrugated bodywork of original Méhari. It's clothed as if in a sumptuous White dress. Not only the body is in White, but the four wheels are too. There's just a strip in bright Orange, for contrast, starting from nothing at the wheels to come and underscore the design of the central safety hoop. The rear hoop is replaced by two side straps, to free up even more space.

For the ultimate in comfort and exclusive refinement, the interior features door linings in luxurious White leather, and the dashboard and seats in the back, take on deliberately square architectural shapes. The colour bright Orange reappears in the form of an exuberant vinyl trim running across the dashboard and along the characteristically shaped air vents. The White/bright Orange combination is also seen on the door handles. The single-spoke, monochrome steering wheel is highly original, as is the leather-lined floor with its White mats.