Vauxhall hands its design to Citroen's chief as Mark Adams retires

Vauxhall confirmed today that Pierre Leclercq has taken charge of design for Vauxhall and Opel with immediate effect. He succeeds Mark Adams, who retires after almost 25 years with the two brands.

The change lands while Vauxhall's next design language is still being settled. Adams's most recent project was the next evolution of that language, previewed on the STX Concept at the Paris Motor Show last month. The car that sketches Vauxhall's next look was developed under the designer who has now left, and the man responsible for turning it into production cars spent the previous eight years designing Citroens.

The face Adams gave Vauxhall

Adams joined Vauxhall and Opel in 2002 as director of exterior design, arriving from senior roles at Ford in Europe and the United States. He became vice president of design in 2007 and has led all production and concept vehicles since then, according to the company's announcement.

His production cars include the Corsa, the ADAM, the Mokka, the Astra and the Insignia. His concepts include the 2003 Insignia Concept, the 2013 Monza, the 2016 GT Concept and the 2018 GTX Experimental, the last of which heavily influenced the current Mokka.

The language he introduced in 2017 is the one drivers will know. "Bold and Pure" brought the Vizor, a gloss panel that runs across the nose and frames the badge and lights in place of a conventional grille aperture. It brought the Compass, the vertical and horizontal axes Vauxhall uses to organise the front end, and the Pure Panel interior. Vauxhall says all three have now been rolled out across its range.

The Vizor is the part that mattered commercially. It gave a brand selling largely on value a recognisable face at a time when its cars shared platforms and powertrains with Opels, Peugeots and Citroens. Whether it made the cars more desirable is harder to answer, and the sales data gives only part of the reply.

The market the next design has to work in

Vauxhall registered 70,491 cars in the first nine months of 2026, a 4.05% share of the market and 6.14% more than in the same period last year, according to SMMT's final September figures. The market grew faster, up 10.2% to 1,739,271, so the brand's share slipped from 4.21% a year earlier.

September was weaker than the year as a whole. Vauxhall registered 11,991 cars in the month for a 3.42% share, down 1.06% on September 2025, when its share was 3.87%. Our coverage of the September numbers shows what the brand was up against: a market up 12% and a record electric car volume.

The model mix explains part of the pressure. The Corsa accounted for 27,390 registrations in the nine months, the fifth best-selling car in Britain and 38.9% of everything Vauxhall sold. In September it was seventh on 5,498. No other Vauxhall appeared in the top ten in either table.

A brand whose volume rests that heavily on one supermini has room for design to work further up the range. The Astra and the Mokka carry the brand beyond the Corsa, and neither has broken into the sales top ten this year.

Who takes over

Leclercq is 54 and Belgian. He graduated from ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena in 1998, began at Ford's Ghia studio in Italy, joined BMW Group in 2000 and worked on BMW, MINI and Rolls-Royce models before becoming head of design for BMW M in 2011. He moved to Great Wall Motors in 2013, joined Kia as design director in 2017, and became head of Citroen design on 1 November 2018.

At Citroen he led the design of the C3, C3 Aircross, C4, C4 X and the new C5 Aircross, along with the Ami and the 2CV and 2CV Fourgonnette concepts shown at this year's Paris Motor Show. The brand's UK registrations rose 82.89% to 25,528 in the first nine months, lifting its share from 0.88% to 1.47%.

Product and pricing did much of that work. The design of the C3 and C3 Aircross also gave Citroen a clearer identity than it had a decade ago, which is the part Stellantis is buying.

Gilles Vidal, Stellantis's head of design for European brands, said Leclercq has "a deep understanding of brand identity and a recognised ability to translate strategic vision into desirable products". Leclercq reports to Vidal and to Florian Huettl, the Opel and Vauxhall chief executive, and joins the joint executive committee.

Florian Huettl said of the outgoing designer: "Mark served as Vice President Design longer than any of his predecessors. His work and vision have shaped what Vauxhall and Opel are today."

The wider reshuffle

The Vauxhall appointment was one of two design moves Stellantis announced on Monday. Sandeep Bhambra, vice president of design strategy for Europe since April 2026, takes over design for Citroen and DS Automobiles from today. He spent more than a decade at Peugeot, where he worked on the second-generation 2008 and 5008 and the Onyx concept, then moved to Renault in 2021 to lead advanced design and concept cars.

Thierry Metroz, DS's design chief, moves to a European design strategy role supporting Vidal. The result is a single reorganisation covering Vauxhall, Opel, Citroen and DS, and it leaves Leclercq with the widest brief: a mass-market marque sold across Europe under two names.

What happens next

Vauxhall has said the redrawn Griffin, shown on the STX without its flag for the first time in more than 120 years, will appear on its next all-new production model in 2027. That car will be the first test of the handover, because it carries design work that began under Adams and will be completed under Leclercq.

The company's history sets the scale of the job. Vauxhall has been making cars in Britain since 1903, and its Ellesmere Port plant is the country's first electric-only car factory, building the Combo Electric van. Adams, a British designer who studied at the Royal College of Art, spent almost a quarter of a century shaping how those vehicles look.

Leclercq arrives from a brand known for comfortable, rounded and deliberately unconventional cars. Vauxhall's recent models have been sharper and more geometric. The next generation will show whether it follows the STX's taller, more sculpted front end or softens towards the Citroen approach.

The handover is effective today. The first Vauxhall that carries Leclercq's decisions rather than Adams's is still some way from a showroom, and when it arrives it will settle whether the Vizor was a chapter or the foundation.