Citroen DS5 2011 Review - International

Somewhere in Sochaux, France, there was an idea. It was provoked by Citroen being in lock-step with PSA group stable mate, Peugeot, which meant sharing the same chassis backbones, engines, gearboxes and suspensions, and that all created a cap on what it could charge for its cars.

What if, the thinking went, we just made a whole new sub-brand (that was more like an over-brand) that shared as many Citroen parts as possible but looked, felt and earned like almost-premium cars?

“Tops,” they proclaimed, and so the DS brand was born. The MINI-rivaling DS3 started the show rolling (just weeks after an original DS “Goddess” set a suspiciously high world record at auction...), then there was the larger DS4 and now the range gets its promised third model, the even-larger DS5.

This is by far the longest PSA car yet to sit on the “B” platform (which also sits beneath the C4 and Peugeot’s 308), yet Citroen is loathe to call it a large car.

No, this DS version is definitely a medium car, and one that will launch with a flagship 147kW petrol engine, a 135kW diesel and a diesel-electric hybrid.

The front-drive DS won’t make its newness felt from below decks, because it’s all reasonably familiar stuff. The turbo-charged, direct-injection four 1.6 might be at the forefront of four-pot engine technology, but it has been seen before in everything from the MINI Cooper to the BMW 1-Series to the Peugeot RCZ. It’s a quality motor, so we note its widespread use out of respect rather than criticism, but it does make it difficult to claim your stuff’s unique when it’s clearly not.

Neither is the performance the thing that stands out, because it, too, is in the same ballpark as its transplant cohorts.

At 1430kg, it’s heavier than the MINI machines and even Peugeot’s similarly-engined machinery, so you can’t expect it to out sprint them. And it doesn’t, but it’s not poor. Its 147kW turns up in a flat line from 5500rpm to 6800, and that’s after the 275Nm of torque has done its job from 1700 to 4500rpm. It’s a good, strong spread of performance for real-world usage.

Put it to use under pressure and it will produce a 0-100km/h sprint of 8.2 seconds and a 400-metre sprint of 16 seconds, both of which are fair without flashing a sparkle. There’s also a bit of the fair-to-middling about the fuel economy figure, because it uses 6.7L/100km and emits 155g/km of CO2/km, but it’s almost a litre better than the less-powerful THP155 version, thanks largely thanks to the 115kW car’s uninspiring six-speed automatic gearbox.

Then there are the gearboxes. The six-speed manual attached to the THP200 petrol motor is, again, the same one both MINI and Peugeot use, and so is the six-speed auto that bolts to the turbo-diesel (which is, you guessed it, also used by MINI and Peugeot).

The diesel most likely to come to Australia is the DS5’s 120kW motor, which is already found in the DS5 and the C5. The 2.0-litre, turbocharged engine brings its peak power at 3750rpm, but the key figure is the 340Nm of torque it thumps out between 2000 and 3000rpm. It used 5.9L/100km with the 17-inch rubber we tried, which doesn’t strike us as terribly good for a small diesel these days.

The real point-of-difference for Citroen, then, is away from the oily bits and up in the shiny bits. The five-door body of the DS5 is instantly in keeping with the DS family style and, just as instantly, also its own character.

The headlights are huge and swivel with the steering, the grille reflects its siblings and then there is the “Sabre”. That’s Citroen’s name for the enormous, bonnet-length chromed sword panel that extends part way up the A-pillar and is matched by another one down in the sills. This lower one begins in front of the front wheel, then extends all the way along the car, and the designers insist it’s supposed to add visual length to it all.

It is, at first glance, a fussy way of doing something relatively simple, but it has the sort of visual balance that grows on you and, as we later discovered, looks especially swish from the rear three-quarter view when it’s cruising up the road. From the rear, you get the view of the drooping roofline, the darkened rear-side glass (that is actually made of polycarbonate plastic) and the chromed, oval exhaust tips which promise a punch-packing powerhouse the DS5 can’t deliver.

It continues inside, with a range of fairly expensive materials on show and stuck together at a quality control level that isn’t matched by the regular Citroen machines.

From the multi-adjustable driver’s seat alone, you can reach out and touch three different metal surfaces and four different plastics, all of which feel like they’re German-spec high quality.

Citroen’s management team insists the interior takes styling cues from aerospace, hence the assortment of switches in the centre of the roof panel, but then mix their metaphors by drawing yet-more inspiration from watch bracelets for the THP200’s leather seat pattern.

There’s a steering wheel with a very thick-looking centre pad (which doesn’t promise handling alacrity), an elongated leather cover for the instrument cluster and an enormous analogue clock which, in the clanger of the launch, was announced as having: “two hands, just as you would find in up market cars.”

The centre console is wide and houses a cubby hole, an armrest, the window switches, the parking brake, the gear shifter and not a single cup holder. They’re to be found in the wide door pockets, they look like afterthoughts and do a miserable job of securing the bottles and cans we tried.

Citroen may not call this a large car (and, in truth, it isn’t), but there’s a marked feeling of spaciousness inside the cabin that belies its dimensions. That’s partly because of the clever, chamfered design at the top of the inner door skin and partly because the thing’s got more glass than a Swarovski outlet store. Besides the steeply raked windscreen (indeed, it’s so steeply raked that it needs two A-pillars per side), there are glass panels above the heads of the people up front, another one in the second row and a bit more at the back and the rear sides. It is, then, a light collector par excellence.

That doesn’t always work in its favour, though. You can slide shut the covers for the front three pieces of roof glass, but the reflections play havoc with the clock, that looks purple most of the time, and there are serious reflections on the chromed-plastic surrounds on the instrument cluster. This last part gets annoying, because it’s unique to the two minor dials to the side of the combined speedo/tacho, and you can’t avoid it, because the light is coming from the dials themselves.

There’s also a pop-up head-up display unit that bounces its info off a curved piece of glass (the windscreen angle is too steeply raked to bounce off), and you lift it up or down via one of the roof-mounted buttons, then you can fine-tune it up or down with one of its neighbours.

All good so far... mostly. The rear seat, too, feels broad and comfy and light, though there’s not a lot of foot room beneath the front seats and they’re a better fit for two adults than they are for three. They fold flat, too, to give extra length to a 468-litre standard luggage space that is large without being imaginative. There are no curry hooks, no little cubby holes, no “wow” ideas. It’s just flat, with two hooks for a cargo net. And there is no lever or button on the boot, so you have to open it from either inside the car or via the key.

Part of the reason the luggage area is so flat is that it uses PSA’s “flexible beam” rear suspension to keep the rear bumper off the ground. And it’s one of the biggest disappointments in the car, and one that never lets the expensive, stylish interior design complete its job of dragging your mind away from the cheaper, mass-production architecture beneath it.

This is particularly pronounced in the diesel which, for all its merit as a strong player and a brilliantly smooth player, can’t get its ride and handling story to overlap with its interior promise.

Its enemy is square-edged bumps and its nemesis is a series of them - and they don’t have to be deep or high. The level of bump-thump from the back end of the car - particularly from the unladen, inside wheel - just doesn’t match up with Citroen’s DS brand promise. It also allows more than its fair share of rear tyre noise into the cabin.

It might look and feel like an expensive car when you’re sitting inside the cabin or running along a billiard-table smooth piece of blacktop -- or even a softly undulating road -- but that feeling dissipates quickly when you strike anything imperfect. And that’s a shame, because the rest of it comes so close to delivering on the promise.

The diesel engine is brilliant, even if its transmission partner isn’t. PSA has a dual-clutch gearbox under development and it can’t come soon enough. The six-speed auto hunts mercilessly with the slightest rub of the throttle in its Sport mode and struggles with lethargy if left to its default setting.

It’s also got a manual mode, but the lever-only system shifts the wrong way (forward for up shift) and, besides, the auto will change up or down when it wants to anyway. When this happens at about the same time you’ve manually asked for a gear, it will memorise your choice, proceed with its own choice and combine the two to shift up two gears at once.

That’s a real pity, because the engine is so silky smooth and so well isolated that you’d easily mistake it for a low-revving petrol engine. Even when it’s spinning at 4500rpm, there are no hints of traditional diesel complaints and no harsh vibrations sent zinging through the cabin. It’s like a slightly relaxed petrol engine that’s just a fraction louder.

It’s also impressively strong from very low revs and overtakes in the 80-120km/h range with casual disdain.

Fortunately, though, Citroen paid more attention to the underpinnings of the THP200 than it did to the diesel range. On the same roads, the petrol-engined car was a lot more convincing, the cabin far better isolated and the handling more trustworthy.

It still felt nose-heavy and unconvinced in its initial movements, but it settled mid-corner to provide impressive grip and stubborn poise, particularly from the front end.

That’s not to suggest the steering is anything special - it isn’t - but it’s largely because the DS5 runs a new generation of traction control software. It’s so good that it’s a contender for the best front-drive / skid-control setup going around anywhere, from anybody. It’s designed to let the tyre still spin a little bit, rather than annoyingly cutting the throttle, but the car continues going in the direction you wanted, without any nasty surprises. It is little short of brilliant and kudos to the software boffin.

It combines with an engine that always feels strong and willing, even with a lot more weight (and, with its glass-spattered roof, a lot more weight way above the roll centre) than a MINI has to manage. It’s stronger in rolling acceleration than it is in standing starts, and that’s to its credit. It’s also smooth and willing, though like its diesel brethren, it’s let down by its gearbox.

The six-speed manual isn’t brilliant (it’s not brilliant in the MINI, either), because its gear throws are long and loose, while the springing back to the centre is so strong that you can find yourself plucking fourth instead of sixth.

But it’s still the pick of the DS5 range, largely because the extra suspension work lets you more easily believe the sub-premium sales story spun by the cabin. And that’s the key to it. It doesn’t need to be the best handler or have the best ride or be the quietest, but it does have to be good enough to be credible at the price, and to fulfill the promise of all those expensive, stylish materials inside the cabin.

And only with this engine does the DS5 get close enough to that ambition.

But wait, there’s more...
You didn’t think Citroen would go to all this trouble and not throw in a Hybrid, did you?

Well, put your fears at rest, because they have. And, being Citroen, they’ve done it in a way that’s at once the same as you’ve seen before, with a couple of odd twists.

For starters, the DS5 Hybrid combines the extra expense of a diesel engine (most hybrids use petrol engines) with an electric motor on the rear axle and the established technology of a nickel-metal-hydride battery pack.

The result is a machine that can be drive at up to 70km/h as a pure electric, rear-drive car, can be driven in snow, on dirt or in the rain as an extra-grip all-wheel drive car. It can also be driven as a front-drive diesel machine or can be hurled through the hills as a sportier machine which uses its electric motor to add power and help the handling.

It also makes it easy for the driver, with a simple extra knob with four settings: ZEV (zero emission vehicle), 4WD, Sport and the default automatic setting, which recharges the battery on any deceleration and moves the drive around as required.

The really clever part is the 4WD bit, which uses the battery’s charge to drive the rear wheels and then, if the battery is fully drained, still keeps the electric motor turning to keep you secure. How? It just diverts the 8kW alternator’s zap directly into the electric motor, because Citroen figures that if the road is slippery enough that you need 4WD, then you don’t really need that extra 8kW going to the front wheels from the diesel engine.

It’s a smooth, seamless system, and the two engines (with the six-speed auto on the back of the 120kW diesel) combine to deliver 149kW, though the electric motor can, theoretically, deliver up to 70km/h (though we couldn’t get it beyond 55 before the diesel cut back in).

It actually does help in Sport mode, though it doesn’t last long with the extra exertion -- and by that, we mean more like five kilometres than 30. When it’s all over in either ZEV mode or Sport mode, it just drops back into the default setting.

Citroen claims it will emit 99g/km of CO2 with a 3.8L/100km consumption figure, but it also fits quite nicely with the feel and mood of the DS5, so it’s probably going to deliver better numbers in the real world than it does in the lab.

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