Citroen C5 1.6 HDi VTR review
by David Finlay (25 January 2005)
The C5 is one of those cars you really have to try for yourself to get an inkling of what it offers. Its name does not stick in the conciousness the way Mondeo or Vectra do (or even the way Xantia did, that car being the C5's predecessor) and it surely can't attract much attention from fellow road users. A recent facelift, which has led to Citroen describing this car as the New Look C5, has helped considerably, but now that the test car has been handed back I still find myself having to check the pictures to remind myself of what it looked like.
For those reasons I don't imagine the C5 is doing particularly well in terms of conquest sales, but once you climb aboard the car starts to make a good case for itself. It is, first and foremost, very big. If you and your three largest friends get inside, you will all fit easily, as long as none of you is in the Guinness Book of Records for reasons of height, girth or inability to sit down.
Space for stuff is impressive, too. If you really want a load-carrier, go for the estate, but the hatchback still offers 471 litres of luggage room if the rear seats are up and you want to retain the parcel shelf, extending to 1315 litres if you lower the seats and leave the parcel shelf at home.
The test car had the smallest of the three available turbo diesel engines, the 1.6-litre 110bhp HDi, and to be honest I had early doubts as to how effective this unit would be. I had visions of constantly hitting the rev limiter if I wanted to make any kind of decent progress.
Wrong. This is a sturdy little motor, well up to the job. Unlike the two-litre or 2.2 versions, this one won't do much if you simply tickle the accelerator pedal, but if you make more use the revs than you would with the larger engines (ooh, maybe 3500rpm if you're in a real hurry) you'll cover the ground quickly enough. It does help that in this form the C5 is quite low-geared at 26.5mph per 1000rpm in fifth, but it remains a quiet and refined cruiser despite that.
The official economy figures are spectacular but perhaps misleading unless you have no ambitions to overtake anyone. Multiply the combined 52.3mpg by the size of the 14.5-gallon tank and you get a notional range of just over 750 miles. I admit I did a lot of quick motoring, very little of it on motorways, and I bottled out before the fuel warning light came on, so my figure of not quite 500 miles isn't representative. In different circumstances I'm sure I could have beaten the 600-mile mark easily between stops, which suggests a realistic consumption well into the mid-40s.
In terms of the driving experience the C5 feels very much the same as any other large French car. There are good and bad points to this. The chassis spends a lot of time dealing with changes of direction in both the horizontal planes, so it leans gently into corners and then stands back up again equally gently. It also smooths out large-scale road undulations very effectively. As long as the C5 does not feel it is being forced into anything, it provides superb ride quality.
The problem arises when it has to deal with a situation in a hurry. It takes some time to recover from a sharp turn made at any kind of speed, and abrupt crests create havoc as the car fails to understand what is going on and the traction control warning light flashes far earlier than you expected (and continues to flash for some time afterwards). The C5 has the ability to flow beautifully, but it can only do this if flow has already been included in the design of the road.
Our car was in VTR specification, which does not mean the same as it does with smaller Citroens. In those, the name suggests budget sportiness (VTS signifies a higher budget and more sportiness), but in the case of the C5 it simply indicates the middle of three trim levels - or, as here, the higher of two, since there is no Exclusive version of the 1.6.
For an extra £1000, the C5 VTR provides various items of equipment over the entry-level LX including 16" alloy wheels and body-coloured bumpers, door mirrors and side strips. Of the items you can't see from the outside, unless you're peering in, VTR spec also consists of dual-zone air-conditioning, front seat lumbar adjustment, a storage bin under the front passenger seat and a rear armrest with ski flap storage and two cupholders. Oh, and you get rain-sensitive wipers and headlamps that switch themselves on automatically, both of which I would quite happily delete.
The test car also had optional metallic paint (£325) and Parking Assistance (£450). Of the options which were not fitted, the one I would be most likely to pick, at a further cost of £750, would be the directional headlamps, though I'm probably influenced by having recently driven another C5 - the 2.0 HDi Exclusive estate - which had these fitted. These are splendid things, and I missed them in the VTR, but I have to add that the C5's lights are already very effective as standard and I never found the lack of directional control to be a problem.
If you were to ask me about this car in three months' time I doubt I would remember much about it without referring to my notes. I don't think that is to the detriment of the C5, which strikes me as an ideal fit-and-forget car - quick enough, economical enough and more than large enough to perform family transport duties without drama. And although it is unfashionable for motoring magazines to make a big deal of such mundane vehicles, the C5's combination of qualities is a lot more relevant in the real world.
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