They call it “ink blue”; I call it indigo. The DS5 has sharp, aggressive styling at the front, and it has separated itself from its Citroën branding, so that its identity is conveyed by a funny, squiggly swoosh on the rear. My father-in-law looked askance at this, as if it were a recalcitrant adult child trying to divorce its parent. But I thought it looked chic and modern: goodbye, boring colours and marques; hello, the colour of midnight and the world of the post-marque.
Then I got in. The cabin is fine: in the Prestige version, which I had, you can electrically control your driver’s seat, but you can’t electrically control the firmness of the ride, or the way the poky gear shifts bring out the racer in you. Nor would you want to: that’s the entire point of buying it, because, at £30,000, this is neither the thriftiest nor the most responsible car in its compact-exec class. The parking camera was one of the best on the market (sounds like a small thing, but often they’re set to be incredibly melodramatic, sounding the alarm when you’re metres away from anything, so that you finish every journey in a state of mild panic).
The controls were intuitive and the finish is high-spec and polished. It felt roomy in the front, though some pesky adults complained about headroom in the back, and boot space was ample. Visibility was terrible: the front struts interfered with my peripheral vision. I couldn’t tell whether I was approaching a tree, a pedestrian or the frame of my own car, which made my urban driving extremely timid and obviated the beefy engine entirely (this was a 150; there’s a 180, too). Maybe this was deliberate on the part of the designer, to introduce more caution to the whole driving culture: like Copenhagen crossings, in which the pavement and the road are deliberately ambiguated to make people slow down. My sister says it’s like using children as bollards.
There’s also an inexplicable horizontal strut across the back, which I didn’t mind in town, but interfered with rear visibility and was maddening on a motorway. There’s an argument that you adjust to anything over time, but an adjustment that takes longer than a week is a mistake.
Once you lighten up and stop worrying about seeing all the other cars, you will notice how much fun there is to be had in the upper gears. Zero to 62mph isn’t, at over 10 seconds, particularly impressive, but there’s lots of range in fourth and fifth gears (nothing in sixth, but fair enough), and overtaking is a pleasure.
Indeed, there’s plenty to like about it: it has stamina but it’s also nippy, it’s smooth and soundless, but with a rough, diesel-y edge. Maybe it’s a bit niche, but there will be people in this car’s bracket who spend their lives trying to look niche.
Citroën DS5: in numbers
Price £31,160
Acceleration 0-62mph in 10.9 seconds
Top speed 127mph
CO2 emissions 105g
Combined cycle 68.9mpg
Cool factor 7/10
Eco factor 8/10
