Citroen C5 Aircross review: A versatile SUV that deserves its halo

The new Citroen C5 Aircross SUV, although a very versatile car, has but one real purpose in life: to act as a “halo” car for the make. It is the new Citroen flagship, seeing as they’ve stopped trying to sell proper “big” cars again.

The C5 is now an SUV, but more a medium-sized one than those behemoths that try, and fail, to challenge the Range Rover.

They know when they’re beat, after all. This one is more a competitor for, say, the Nissan Qashqai.

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For Citroen sits bang in the middle of the mid-market melee, a jumble of competing brands that seem to have less and less emotional resonance with the buying public, and, more apposite, the non-car-buying young public.

So: ask yourself what Citroen stands for? Chances are it will be cheap deals and jolly Picasso people carriers, frangible dashboards and temperamental electrics, and maybe some vague affectionate memories of classics such as the 2CV.

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You won’t associate Citroen with SUVs because it has only just got into that game, and, it is anxious to point out, the C5 Aircross is not just another SUV to add to roads already saturated with them, from Mini and Fiat 500 variants to Rolls-Royce’s and Aston Martin’s takes on the concept.

They have their work cut out, then, to be distinctive and the best news for the firm and its customers is that the C5 acquits itself very well indeed as simply a good car. It’s a cousin to the Peugeot 3008 (as part of the same PSA group), which means that it has inherited an extremely well-engineered platform, or chassis.

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Groupe PSA has striven hard to put the quality back into its products, and this C5 certainly feels more durable and solid than many previous efforts, It is refined and quiet, especially in the petrol version, but whichever you choose from the four engine options you will have an award-winning unit ahead of you driving the front wheels – economical and powerful.

There’s no four-wheel drive option, so, arguably a bit of a faux SUV, but it has some electronics (“Grip Control” and Hill Descent Assist) that will help with tricky terrains, as does the good ground clearance

Citroen invited the cream of the world’s motoring journalists, and me, to test its ride on the worst roads in Morocco, though it might as well have asked us to motor round Surrey to see how it copes with some really nasty potholes.

Anyway, the C5 Aircross acquitted itself well.

Indeed Citroen’s mission is to get you to think that C stands for comfort as well as Citroen, and to that end they have devised something they call “Citroen Advanced Comfort”, which they don’t shorten to “CAC”, for obvious reasons.

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It basically means they’ve added some extra hydraulic “stops” to the shock absorbers to deliver “qualifying carpet ride”, which is obvious hyperbole, but it does work pretty well.

They’ve also treated the C5 to some nice soft (optional nappa leather) seats with a pleated look and some sort of special foam. It all helps, and, yes it all works.

The interior carries on the slightly playful themes of the exterior, with those “Airbump” shapes we first saw on the C4 Cactus proliferating. There are some impressively big and clear touchscreens for the satnav, audio and connectivity features. Only the controls for the adaptive cruise control seem old-fashioned now – rather than the now usual steering wheel buttons they’ve retained a separate pod behind the wheel, which is a bit fiddly.

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Otherwise, the C5 is a pleasant place to spend time; it enjoys the typical high driving position and ease of access for people with mobility issues, and has the biggest boot in its class. Within the constraints of the SUV, Citroen has striven to replicate the old virtues of the MPV, though there’s no seven-seat option for the C5 (the designers have retained the C4 Space Tourer, the spiritual successor to that highly popular run of Picassos, before everyone went nuts for SUVs).

I think the C5 deserves to do well. It seems to have had some substantial engineering effort chucked at it (though time will tell quite how long-lasting that inner strength proves to be), and the styling is, as intended, SUV without being exactly aggressive. PSA has also, despite all the upmarket talk, given its new car what it calls “fair pricing”, so it is a bit of a value proposition – the base model will be yours for a list price of £23,225, and no doubt you could haggle that down.

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I’d go for the more powerful “PureTech 180” petrol model with the excellent 8-speed automatic box, in “Feel” trim level plus the “Metropolitan Grey” leather ambiance, as they call these things, and have a solid red one, as that’s perhaps the next big colour trend.

Next year, Citroen celebrates its 100th birthday. It’s had a chequered history, if you’ll pardon the expression, and for almost half its life has been a subsidiary of Peugeot.

That has meant some dreadfully dull rehashes of dreadfully dull Peugeots (AX), and some sparkling versions of sparkling Peugeots (C4 Sebastian Loeb edition) and somewhere inside that corporate machine there was always a bit of Citroen spirit still alive, and the world is a better place for it. The C5 Aircross may be just another SUV, but it is a welcome entrant, nonetheless. Halo or not.