Christian Streiff has been head of Peugeot Citroën for six months – nearly twice as long as he spent in his last job as chief executive of Airbus.

The outspoken French-born executive left the aircraft manufacturer after a clash with other board members over a radical restructuring of the business. On arrival at Peugeot, Mr Streiff announced a radical restructuring, although this one has gone a little better so far.

Peugeot, in common with many other carmakers, was then badly in need of an overhaul. It had overshot on production and underdelivered on new models. In the highly competitive car market, something had to give and last year the company gave several profit warnings and announced plans to cut capacity. In the UK it closed its only factory at Ryton, Coventry. However, the moves had an air of panic about them, coming quickly one after another.

Mr Streiff wanted the plan for Peugeot’s revival to look a little more long-term and considered. And this time, he avoided being the single champion of change by creating groups of managers to come up with cost reductions and improvements to the business.

A turnaround seems to have started, with a 22 per cent increase in half-year profits last month and a 30 per cent increase in the share price since the start of the year. However, specific targets for the business for the next three years will not be outlined until next month.

One thing is clear already: Peugeot’s ambitions will be more modest than in the past. Mr Streiff’s priority for Europe’s second-biggest carmaker is that it becomes, and remains, the best No 2 car manufacturer. Peugeot, which last year sold 3.3 million vehicles, is not in sight of Volkswagen, which sold 5.7 million, although Mr Streiff thinks that mere volume numbers are misleading.

“Look what happened to the No 1 and No 2 in this industry [General Motors and Toyota]. The No 2 overcame, in number of vehicles, the No 1, but it had been the real No 1 for years. Toyota was the real No 1 in the industry years before they had to admit that they are becoming No 1 in the number of vehicles.”

Mr Streiff wants to emulate Toyota’s rise in terms of quality, model development and brand positioning to become a tough contender to VW, even if it lags behind it in terms of size. Once Peugeot had ambitions of hitting sales of four million a year, ahead of Honda and Nissan, but that will not be a feature of the final stage of its revival plan.

Volume is no longer the name of the game for many in the car industry amid the painful restructurings for Ford and General Motors. The market has become more dynamic in model development and far tougher on price, making volume production far more challenging. Witness the low level of interest from carmakers in the brands that have come on the market – Chrysler, which was recently sold by Daimler after a troubled marriage between the two, Land Rover, Jaguar and Aston Martin. Mr Streiff believes that many in the industry would be nervous about acquisitions even without overcapacity to worry about.

“Today,” he says, “everyone in the car industry knows it is extremely difficult to make a success out of an acquisition . . . everyone is looking at it with apprehension. With Daimler, you have a chat échaudé [a cat that has been scalded by hot water and now is afraid of cold water].”

The frightened “cats” of carmaking are helping to create a climate for new forms of ownership, Mr Streiff believes, including private equity – a force on which he has mixed feelings.

“Nevertheless, the industry concentration will go on. But I fear a bit that newcomers will come in or new animals, maybe mixed animals – between carmakers and investment funds. The landscape will get more complicated.”

Mr Streiff is a newcomer to the motor industry, having spent most of his career with the glass and construction materials group Saint-Gobain. He is still getting to grips with the mixture of a fickle consumer market, large-scale industry and long lead times from product design to launch.

“It is definitely a crazy industry,” he says. “You have to run a marathon at the speed of 100 yards.

“This is something absolutely new for me, the idea of creating progressively. You go from the concept and you begin to touch the baby and so on. You’re looking at the right compromise between good value for money and the nice touch which makes it sell or not at the end of the day.”

A challenge for Peugeot Citroën is internationalisation. Three quarters of the group’s sales are in Western Europe, a market in slight decline in recent years. It is attempting aggressive increases in the Chinese market and is looking at strong development in Brazil and Argentina. However, the two brands are not in the United States and the carmaker has no plans to go there. “We don’t have today the strengths, the financial strengths, the strengths of people, to say we will attack this market, which is not at all waiting for us,” Mr Streiff says. “Nobody is waiting for us there, all customers are well served, and so they live very well without us.”

The French carmaker also has gaps in its range compared with its rivals. It lacks a very small, cheap entry-point model and a luxury division – both growing markets. For now, however, Peugeot’s focus is on being the best No 2 carmaker in Europe.

Curriculum vitae

Born September 21, 1954, at Sarrebourg, France

Education Engineering degree from the École Nationale Supérieure de Mines de Paris

Career Saint-

Gobain
Joined in 1979 as production manager of a foundry in Germany. Rose through group and became its deputy chief executive in 2004.

Airbus
Made president and chief executive officer in 2006

Peugeot Citroën
November 2006, adviser, reporting to chairman of managing board. Its chairman since February 2007

Other directorships
Non-executive director of Thyssen-Krupp and Continental

Family Married with three children

The leader questioned

If you could change one thing in the financial and commercial environment, what would it be? A monetary policy that will create a level playing field of exchange rates for industry to compete fairly across the globe.

What does leadership mean? The first element is to have your team on board. Then, the three watchwords are learn, share, move.

Which businessman or woman do you most admire? Founders, for example Camille Cavalier , who founded Pont-a-Mousson (now part of St Gobain). Jean Mantelet, who founded Moulinex. I also admire leaders such as Churchill and de Gaulle.

Who is or was your mentor? My parents.

Which is more important, what you know or who you know? What you know.

Does money motivate you? Certainly not my first motivation. I am passionate about creating, building and having fun.

What is the most important business event, good or bad, to happen in your working life? The creation and development of a factory in Brazil.

What gadget must you have? The two things that I use when I am trekking are the compass and the altimeter, but these are not really gadgets.

How do you relax? Swimming, walking, trekking and theatre.

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