I am not a Citroen hater, I refer to my experience with the Xantia and what I said about that. However............................
And then there was the C5?..
Rented one. Drove 1100 miles in 5 days. Hatchback HDI. Diesel, automatic.
It is a strange looking car, not particularly unpleasant, but it is strange. It?s bigger than I expected, but it seems to have huge slab-like sides. It seems like a lot of metal. I thought at first it looked like a Sierra, but in retrospect I think it looks like an Omega.
When I first got in there were two main impressions; Firstly, it is very spacious inside. Width, length and headroom. It feels airy as well.
Second impression is that it is tacky and better suited to some cheap kids toy. Loads of silver metal, on the gear change, on the suspension switch, on the console. It looks *really* tacky. Worse, I suspect it will very quickly look dated.
Getting started was difficult. I know they come with manuals, and I know that I could have read the manual, but IMO any car which NEEDS you to read the manual needs to be rethought.
It is probably the least intuitive car I have been in ? especially the computer.
I spent ages trying to get comfortable with the seat adjustment. In the end, I decided I wasn?t going to be. I?m 6ft but I couldn?t get leg distance to pedals, arm distance to wheel and back angle sorted out. In fact I never did and found it a completely uncomfortable car.
Given that I did some reasonably long journeys, I found it very tiring. The seat is sprung well enough, but there is little or no sideways support. Also, I spent the whole time feeling like I was being tipped into the middle of the car.
There is no armrest, which is irritating. Maybe you can get them as extra. The overall feel inside is one of cheapness. Moulding lines are visible everywhere, the doors have the most amazingly cheap plastic opening pockets you have ever seen. Everywhere you look are things which don?t *quite* fit together. You can see where the air pipe leading to the vents protrudes slightly, for example. I am sure it could fit, but it hasn?t been.
The sun visors follow the general trend of cheap, plastic, and likely to break.
Clearly there was little or no quality control on the design or the building of the car. For another example, when lifting up the hatch, obviously the inside surface is covered in a fibre/carpet to match the rest of the interior. All cars are pretty much the same. However, it isn?t finished. It gets to within an inch of the bottom of the door and stops, with a couple of those black plastic pins pushed through into the metal of the door. It looks ok now, but it will curl, come loose, the edge will become damaged etc.
The back parcel shelf will, over time, sag; its thin cheap plastic. The front carpets are held down by large plastic buttons about an inch and half across standing about 1/3 inch proud of the carpet.? I kicked one out and broke it by accident within a week.
All in all, the overall impression is cheap plastic, badly fitted together and gimicky. All that metal around the gear lever is annoying, likely to become old-fashioned, and also the reason why the automatic gearbox is not illuminated at all, ensuring that you have to look in the middle of the dash to see what gear you are in at night.
And on the subject of the dash ? yuk ! It?s messy, untidy and confusing. For example the Speedo, it is almost impossible to know what speed is indicated with a quick glance. Numbers are marked 10, 30, 50, 70 etc. Each missing number is marked with a dot. Each 5 mph is marked by a substantial line which looks like the more normal 10 mph marker. The marked speeds each have an offset white dot underneath them. In the middle of that it is all repeated again for the kph markings. Its difficult to explain, and I am sure impossible to visualize, but take it from me ? horrible and confusing to use.
The boot is big. It seems really big. Sadly it has a high lip and the outer sides also cut in. The side doors have a rounded frame ? essentially therefore, whilst its big, the openings would prevent you getting something in such as a large box. I am sure if you were carrying many small boxes, it would carry a lot, but not big ones.
Inside the glove box is big enough, and the doors have the normal open side pockets which are fine. They have the awful, previously mentioned, plastic ones as well.
Plenty of space for large adults in the front or back (no sunroof) and as I said, it feels airy. According to the ?Mother test? it?s comfortable in the back.
And then we have driving it?????.oh dear.
It is lethal in a side wind, even a small side wind. I spent all my time adjusting and readjusting. Passing trucks in a side wind is flat out dangerous. The car doesn?t tramline and head and tail winds seem not to affect it, but side winds ? you would have to drive it to understand how badly. Dangerous.
The engine ? remember how a week or two ago everybody was telling me how modern diesels are nothing like the older ones ? How they should be the engines of choice ? How the sophistication has changed them beyond all recognition ? Has it buggery !!
It?s loud, rattly, gutless, agricultural and uncomfortable. It is horrible. Moving off the line into fast traffic is best not done at all, if you have to do it, then like me you may be grateful for a little South American training first. Its pickup is awful and it is only a matter of time before you either die of old-age waiting for a sufficiently large gap in traffic or collect a fellow motorist in your boot.
Part of the problem is the gearbox. It seems to change gear naturally too soon . I know it?s a diesel, but it changes so soon the engine is lumpy. However, if it kicks down when you are at speed, then it tries to over rev the engine and therefore there is no power. It has a sports setting on the gearbox ? essentially it simply lets it rev higher in each gear ? the logic of that seems strange in a diesel, however ? therefore to make the car even vaguely acceptable then under 40 you need the sports setting and over 40 not. You can imagine how often I got that right !!
It also has the ability to use manual selection of gears. You can push the lever off to the left and then push it forward to go up a gear and pull it back to go down. Absolute crap. The torque converter slips all over the place, it over rides you when you least expect it, and I can only imagine two uses for it ? when playing in a sporty car ? and this isn?t one, or when towing to stop it hunting. Well, it will probably do that ok.
It has traffic master. It?s obviously in its early days. I got on quite well with it on motorways and actually managed to miss a couple of jams. It also lets you know if you are in a little hold-up or a big one. Pretty useful. No good off the motorways though. It obviously doesn?t pass update stations very often. Therefore it can take 5 miles for it to notice you have turned off the M3 at Basingstoke.
You can drive into Pangbourne and out to Goring. The whole time it will think you are on the M4 because just before Pangbourne you went over an M4 bridge which happens to have one of the little stations on it. Still, that isn?t Citroen´s fault, and as I say, it was quite useful on the motorways.
What is Citroen?s fault is to put it miles from you in front of the windscreen right in the field of vision and then put a bloody great LED which lights in red or green depending on whether or not it has good news for you. It is SOOO distracting.
And the door mirrors ? they are separated into two fields. The outer one, which as normal is tilted slightly to allow you to see stuff. However, the other part is magnifying, and not clearly so. Consequently there is no blind spot. You can see everything, what you cannot do is work out where it is. I resorted to only pulling back in when I could see the vehicle I had overtaken in the rear view mirror. You couldn?t judge it well enough from the side mirrors.
Sadly, the RV mirror vibrated like you couldn?t believe. You could see a car behind you, but you?re not likely to be able to work out model it is !!
On the subject of the computer ? I apparently did 1107 miles at 39.8 mpg. The car has done 7747 miles at 40.6mpg with an average speed for me of 53.7mph and for the car over its life of 44.4mph.
The computer is not intuitive. It is a long way in front and it is virtually impossible to press the buttons on and drive along. The other controls are on the end of the windscreen wiper switch arm. Not that it actually tells you, you just find out when trying to wash the windscreen and see the display change.
Whilst I think about it, all the switchgear will break. Cheap plastic with loose joints. And the switches on the door- windows/mirrors ? will also break. Cheap, fiddly and small to use, and not very substantial. Its also a sod to try and push it lightly enough to bring the drivers window down a little way without it going all ?one touch? on you and opening completely.
Anyway, you cannot select a function on the computer; you have to step sequentially through them all to get to the one you want. Miss it and you will have to go all the way around again.
The radio has its own little switch arm on the steering column. Cheap, flimsy, difficult to see/find until you get used to it, but it has all the right functions.
If I could have got comfortable in the seat, then I would think that the car is pretty good for long distance 70mph cruising. It?s fairly quiet at that speed and as long as there is no side wind, it seems fairly solid. However, it always seems to me that a car has a ?natural? motorway speed. My dodge seems to settle around 70 if I don?t pay attention, the Audi around 90 etc. Maybe it?s just me. However, the C5 seemed to want to settle around 68mph, and I had to keep focussing and driving faster,
There is a very strange rushing noise from the windscreen wipers. It seems to be simply wind rushing across them as they swipe across. It?s not an unpleasant noise, but it is intrusive.
Strange is also the suspension. Going around a roundabout or sweeping corner makes you feel like the car is suffering from the most awful wallowing. It feels like the whole car will fall over. The strange bit is that it isn?t. I followed my friend driving it, and even though he reported the same feeling as me, from behind it was quite clear that it was staying remarkably flat ? it just doesn?t feel like it.
Its horribly rattly on bad surfaces. The drive down to my parents is not made up. Its not full of potholes, but it isn?t made up. The Citroen rattles, especially from the back. Still, there is no need for any kind of traction control. I don?t think this car would need traction control on ice !
Under the bonnet is loads of complicated stuff which means nothing to me. However, what I did understand is the loads of large, cheap, bendy plastic covers clipped over everything which will break and fall off.
Everything about this car says it will be a bad second hand deal. The trim will be decaying, the switches breaking, the plastic warping, bits will be falling off.
This is a 17k car or thereabouts ? I cannot imagine being happy with it under any circumstances, either new and free or secondhand and cheap.
It is a mistake And a big one. I suspect it is going to do Citroen a load of harm. The *only* thing I can say for it is that it has this nice, spacious, airy feeling inside. Oh, and the brakes are excellent, as are the lights.
I visited David Woollard. Perhaps he would like to comment on the fairness of my comments ???
(by the way, I dropped into a friends garage ? alignment, tyre pressures, tyre wear all seemed normal and correct so far as he could tell quickly.)
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