Road Test: Citroen DS4 DStyle 1.6 eHDI EGS Airdream

Price as tested: €27,595

+ Great looking, fabulous seats, relaxing, properly luxurious
– Hard ride, awful gearbox, poor space in the back, price
= Two out of three DS models are hits, this one’s a miss

It’s funny how car launches can so often follow the same trajectory of success-decline-consolidation as that of rock groups. The first album is always bristling with raw, new talent, expertly produced tunes and wonderfully untapped potential. That was the DS3; sparky, agile, properly fun to drive and in no way exactly what you’d expect either from Citroen or from a car with a DS badge. The DS5, which goes on sale in February, is the third album, settling nicely into a groove, playing with the ideas a little but doing nothing to upset the fans.

But it’s always the difficult second album, the sophomore effort, that creates problems. Stick too close to the original and you’d be pilloried for not having any new ideas. Go too far, and you’ll alienate the fans. And all to often, the result is an uncomfortable straddling of the middle ground, pleasing no-one but offending few.

Which brings us to the Citroen DS4 and a car that was always going to be a tricky one. To be honest, I was expecting way, way more than what the DS4 actually turned out to be. The DS3 is, some cabin bits apart, almost nothing like the more mundane C3 to look at or to drive. Likewise, the DS5 is utterly, utterly different to the C5 with which it shares a certain amount of space. But the DS4’s biggest problem is that it cleaves far to close to the existing C4. Now, the C4 isn’t exactly at the pinnacle of the current family hatch tree, but it’s a very pleasant car, looks more premium in its styling than many of its opposition and its spectacularly comfortable to sit in. It’s also well made and economical.

Which leaves the DS4 with what, exactly? It can either be stunningly more attractive than its more humble brother (as are the DS3 and DS5 compared to the C3 and, to a lesser extent, the C5) or be electrifyingly better to drive (DS3 > C3). The problem is, it’s neither.

The DS4 is, mechanically speaking, a C4 with a higher ride height and a slightly swoopier body on the top. There is no dramatic difference in the styling. It’s a good looking car, striking even, but hardly a quantum leap forward over the already attractive C4. In handling terms, it corners with more precision and much less understeer than the C4 but there is none of the DS3’s crisp steering or out and out agility. But with that quasi-SUV ride height, it must surely have the comfiest ride this side of a Rolls Phantom, no?

No. For some utterly unknown reason, Citroen decided that the DS4 should be both jacked-up and firm riding. The final chassis setting is, frankly, dreadful. yes, body roll has been kept well in check, and on smooth roads, it corners with reasonable aplomb, but on anything less than virgin, fresh-rolled tarmac, the ride is just awful, crashing and bumping when it should cosset and comfort. A regular, unadorned VW Golf has one of the best ride qualities you will find in any car, at any price, so why Citroen cannot achieve the same with the DS4 is just beyond me.

There is some compensation in the cabin. Yes, rear seat space is just slightly too tight and I cannot understand the decision to sacrifice winding rear windows to the rear door design. But the instruments are clear, attractive and distinctive, the stubby EGS gearbox selector is a joy to use and the seats, upgraded to leather on our test car, with that wonderful watch-strap embossed pattern, are nothing short of wonderful; supportive, but with just the right amount of squidge.

To the drivetrain. The DS4 is one of the first Citroens to get the new eHDI package which combines the already-frugal 1.6 HDI diesel engine, with 110bhp and 270Nm of torque, with a reversible alternator that can scavenge power for the electrical system from braking and a stop-start that cuts the engine at lights, and restarts it with remarkable alacrity.

The engine is familiar, and as good as ever; refined, torquey and very pleasant to drive, considering that it’s actually a pretty humble diesel four-banger.

But the EGS gearbox is a serious hinderance to smooth progress. Leave it in the auto setting (which surely, for a car that aspires to luxury, is the default setting) and you will be seen to be agreeing vigorously with the radio every time there’s an upchange. Lurch. Nod. Lurch. Nod. Lurch. Nod. Downchanges are fine, crisp and with an occasional burst of heel-and-toe revs, but the only way to get the damn thing to drive smoothly is to take manual control with the paddle shifters. And even then, you have to learn the technique of lifting off the throttle just enough to get the change right. And, as I said, in a luxurious car, auto should be the default. Citroen (and it’s not alone among car makers in this respect) should just swallow its pride and buy a job lot of DSG gearboxes from Volkswagen.

There doesn’t even seem to be a terrific benefit in terms of fuel consumption. Citroen claims 4.4-litres per 100km on the combined cycle. We got 6.5l/100km overall, a figure we’ve beaten with the likes of the much bigger, heavier Ford Mondeo, using the same engine. Perhaps it would have been better with the manual.

If it sounds like I’m down on the DS4, well, I am. Having sampled and loved (DS3) and liked (DS5) the DS range, and being a bit of a closet Citroenista, I really wanted the DS4 to be good. To be impressive. But by being too close in concept to the regular C4, by having such a poor ride quality (no French car should have a harsh ride) and by having that awful gearbox, it just failed to live up to even my mildest expectations. Do yourself a favour; if you crave a quirky French hatchback with a modicum of luxury and practicality, buy a regular C4 instead.



Facts & Figures

Citroen DS4 1.6 eHDI EGS Airdream
Price as tested: €27,595
Range price: €23,995 to €29,895
Capacity: 1,560cc
Power: 110bhp
Torque: 270Nm
Top speed: 189kmh
0-100kmh: 12.4sec
Economy: 4.4l-100km (64.2mpg)
CO2 emissions: 114g/km
VRT Band: A. €104 road tax
Euro NCAP rating: 5-star; 90% adult, 80% child, 43% pedestrian, 97% safety assist.

Road Test: Chyrsler Delta 1.6 M-Jet 120

Price as tested: TBA

+ Different, nice styling, spacious, good quality, refined
– Middling chassis, unknown value for money, brand image needs work
= Affordable luxury? Almost, but needs a dynamic shake-up

So, after all the political wrangling, the financial back and forthing and the foaming at the mouth by aggrieved Lancia fans, the Chrysler Delta is here. A product of Fiat’s buy-out of bankrupt Chrysler and Jeep in 2010, combined with Fiat overlord Sergio Marchionne’s insistence that Chrysler will be kept to US shores and Lancia will take Europe. Except in right hand drive markets, where the old Lancia rust and unreliability rep was deemed to be too big a mountain for the marketing department to scale.

What we’ve got is a Lancia Delta (more or less unchanged from its continental launch in 2008) with Chrysler badges, and that is both a good and bad thing.

Good? Well, yes. Much though us car nuts would like to see the return of a brand a revered as Lancia to our shores, the simple fact is that far too many people will still regard a Lancia as a rust and parts nightmare and would walk, swiftly, away. Chrysler, in spite of such horrors as the old Sebring, has little or no backstory in the compact car market, and a lot of general goodwill thanks to nice cars like the Voyager and 300C. So in that sense, Marchionne’s decision was a no-brainer.

Bad? Well, yes. You see, and I don’t think this is just a car nut thing, but you expect a Chrylser to be big. To have a V8. To be a sofa on wheels, which chrome. And the Delta is none of those things.

It’s a Focus-sized hatchback, with a few twists. Twists like that long, long wheelbase which means you get a whopping amount of legroom in the back. It’s not quite limo-spec, but it’s not far off it.

Up front, you start to see the real, hard evidence of Chrysler’s assertion that the Delta is an affordable luxury car. There is a lot of leather, much of it with nice contrast stitching, quite a lot of chrome and some very high quality plastics. Some poor quality plastics too, sadly, and that does undermine the luxury case somewhat, as do switches and dials just lifted wholesale from the Fiat Bravo, with which the Delta shares its mechanical package.

And again, that sharing is some good, some bad. The good is largely in the engine, a 120bhp, 300Nm 1.6-litre diesel that’s well ahead of most of the competition in the power and torque stakes (so it IS a bit American then). It’s a well sorted unit, and sounds much quieter and more subdued here than it does in the too-noisy Alfa Romeo Giulietta. Chrysler claims 4.9-litres per 100km fuel consumption, which we’d believe as we managed a decent 5.5 average, but its Co2 emissions are just too high. 130g/km means it’s a band above its rivals from Ford, Citroen and Volkswagen.

What about the chassis? Hmmmm. There are some good things here. The steering and turn in are both sharper than we were expecting and the ride is mostly fine. It deals very well with big bumps and lumps, but suffers when the road is covered in small, short-wave stuff. Handling wise it is nicer to chuck through a corner than you’d think, but still well and truly short of the Focus and Golf in dynamic terms. It does have a better combination of ride and handling than the too-stiff Citroen DS4 though.

Ultimately, you can really feel that this is actually already a three year old car. It just doesn’t feel as dynamically well sorted nor as cleverly designed inside as it should be. Take the seats for instance. They look great (leather, again with contrast stitching) but when you actually sit on them, you feel too perched up and unsupported. They should, and could, be much comfier and if you’re selling your car as an affordable luxury carriage, they really ought to be.

The other issue is price. We don’t yet know how much the Delta is going to cost and that’s a fairly critical issue. OK, so Chrysler isn’t stupid and will no doubt have noticed that all of the Delta’s major rivals are in the €20-22k price range, so so will be the Delta. But its potential success or otherwise will depend on whether it’s at the top or bottom end of that range. If it’s a bargain, then it’s got a chance. If not, then probably not.

It’s not a bad car, the Delta, and in Chrysler terms, it’s a good introduction to a marketplace it’s never really dipped a toe in before. But you just can’t help feel that there is more, and better, to come from the Fiat-Chrysler tie-up. A more sophisticated chassis, more attention to detail in the cabin, a clearer sense of what it means to be a Chrysler; all these things would help.

In fairness, that does look as if it’s going to happen. Fiat has given long-serving stylist Lorenzo Ramiciotti the job of coming up with a styling language that works for both Lancia and Chrysler, on both sides of the Atlantic. If he can do that, and if the engineers can come up with a dynamic setup that can pay homage to the marketing bumph of affordable luxury, then this whole Italian-American deal could work out OK.


Facts & Figures

Chrysler Delta 1.6 M-Jet 120
Price as tested: TBA
Range price: TBA
Capacity: 1,598cc
Power: 120bhp
Torque: 300Nm
Top speed: 193kmh
0-100kmh: 10.7sec
Economy: 4.9l-100km (57.6mpg)
CO2 emissions: 130g/km
VRT Band: B. €156 road tax
Euro NCAP rating: 5-star adult, 3-star children, 2-star pedestrian

Road Test: Citroen C5 2.0 HDI Auto

Price as tested: TBA

+ Groovy looks, lovely cabin, different, unique
– Tight rear space, ride too firm
= Attractively different, differently attractive


Shall we not mention the Renault Vel Satis?

The last time a 'mainstream' French car maker tried to convince us to buy a premium saloon that wasn't a saloon, it was Renault's tall, oddball hatch. And charming though it was, it failed utterly in the face of ultra-conservative saloon buyers. It wasn't a conventional three-box and it didn't have a German badge. So no thanks, said the Irish car buying public.

And now here comes Citroen, fresh from it's reinvention of the DS nameplate, expanding a classic singular into a modern three-pronged family of verging-on-premium models.

This then is the third prong of the rebirth of DS, the DS5, a car which will seek to pull in company user-choosers and upper-end family car buyers by being different, attractive and just a little bit luxurious.  

And... It's not quite what we were expecting. With the C4-based DS4 occupying the space around the Qashqai-Golf-A3 kind of area, we expected the DS5 to be bigger by far. But it's not. In fact, it's based on the same basic chassis as the DS4 so although it's a little wider and longer, there's not the clear blue water between them that you'd expect.

That's good in one significant way though, and that's price. Official prices won't be revealed until closer to the February on-sale date but you can expect it to be about €2,500 more than an equivalent C5 saloon, which makes it a lot of luxury for the money.

On the outside it looks exceptionally distinctive. Perhaps not hopelessly gorgeous, but handsome, different and very eye-catching, especially with that chrome 'Sabre' blade running back from the headlights.

Around the back, there are hints of old-shape C4 Coupe, C6 (a little) and Smart Roadster Coupe but overall, it's a handsome beast.

Inside that's continued and with big, enveloping seats and a careful attention to cabin quality detail, the DS5 is a very pleasant place in which to spend time. There are a couple of glitches: the centre console switches are set too far back and the main instruments are a bit uninspiring, but if Citroen was trying to create a premium feel, then it has succeeded.

But not in the back and this is where the DS5's case starts to unravel a little. A car like this, with a DS badge, should be as spacious and as comfy as your lounge. Sadly though, the DS5 just lacks that last inch of knee, foot and headroom to feel properly luxurious in the back. Kids will be fine, adults will not and they're unlikely to be pleased with the cheaper plastics and fiddly electric window switches.

Thankfully the DS reclaims some ground with a big, well shaped 468-litre boot, so it is at least practical.

But what exactly is it? It's certainly  no conventional saloon, and nor is it spacious enough to be an estate (Citroen's own, and excellent, C5 Tourer murders it in the practicality stakes) or high-riding enough to be an SUV. In fact, it tries, as so many have before, to combine elements of each into a coherent whole. And the big surprise is that it comes very close to doing so successfully. After all the last car to try and combine such virtues was the Fiat Croma and  that was a car so bad as to be close to undriveable.

But the DS5 actually manages a decent fist of it. It's handsome enough to make you look past its lack of a separate boot, and in the front at least, comfy and stylish enough to make you believe in its pretensions of luxury. As ever with a Citroen, it’s the little details that sell it. That Sabre blade of chrome we’ve already mentioned, but then there’s the (optional) leather embossed with a gorgeous watch-strap pattern, the little hatch-like individual sunroofs over the driver and passenger, the neat Head Up Display, the aircraft-style switches in the roof and the pretty LED daytime running lights.

Dynamically, it's a mixed bag. Stick to wide, mostly smooth roads and the DS5 feels composed and positive to drive with well weighted steering and excellent body control.

Stray onto twistier, bumpier stretches though and it's not so good. The steering proves under-geared and the ride quality, certainly on the 19" alloys of our test car, was little better than poor, and far too firm and jiggly for a supposedly luxurious French car.

Fitted with a conventional six-speed automatic, the 160bhp 2.0 HDI diesel is lovely, keeping itself mostly quiet, proving itself very punchy and suppressing its emissions and consumption to acceptable levels. There will be a 110bhp eHDI version that uses Citroen's annoyingly jerky EGS automated manual but manages Band A emissions and a very high tech Hybrid4 that keeps the 160bhp diesel, adds a battery-powered rear axle and provides a combined 200bhp with 99g/km emissions. Impressive stuff, but a brief spin showed that it too is hobbled by the awkward EGS box and we didn't have it long enough to see if it can get close to its claimed 3.8-litre per 100km combined fuel consumption figure. If not, then the regular HDI has a still-excellent balance of consumption and performance, and doesn't sacrifice boot space to the Hybrid's bulky battery pack.

What Citroen has wrought with the DS5 is... interesting. To be honest, I doubt that the blinkered Irish car buyer, wracked with conservatism, will ever see past the horde of more conventional three-box shapes that stand between him and the DS5. But for the 150 or so people Citroen Ireland expects to snap one up, there is something very good here.

Yes, the ride needs fixing, and if you  must regularly carry adults in the back then you're better off with a C5, but as ever, Citroen has decided to stretch it's legs out onto the precipitous high-wire marked 'different' and thank god that it's prepared to do so. Perhaps the best illustration of the DS5’s character is to look up its safety rating on www.euroncap.com Quite apart from the fact that it scores exceptionally highly in all aspects of safety, there’s the little panel underneath to contrast it with ‘Comparable Cars.’ None are listed...



Facts & Figures

Citroen DS5 2.0 HDI Auto
Price as tested: TBA
Price range: TBA
On sale: February 2012
Capacity: 1,997cc
Power: 163bhp
Torque: 340Nm
Top speed: 215kmh
0-100kmh: 8.8sec
Economy: 5.1l-100km (51.3mpg)
CO2 emissions: 133g/km (129g/km with 16” wheels)
Road Tax Band: B €156
Euro NCAP rating: 5-star adult: 89% adult, 83% child, 40% pedestrian, 97% safety assist