Citroen C5 2.0 HDi Exclusive Estate review
by David Finlay (12 January 2005)
With the greatest of respect to the Renault Clio 182 Cup, it didn't have a chance here. Faced with the prospect of a two-person, five-day New Year holiday in a distant part of the country, and with the choice of a hot hatch or a large, fully-equipped, diesel-fuelled Citroen C5 estate, I'm sure that you would - as we did - leave the Clio to its own devices and jump aboard the Citroen.
How many times recently have we said that estates generally look better than their saloon equivalents these days? It applies here too. The ordinary C5 seems fairly anonymous on the road, but the estate has a vastly superior air. Approaching it from the front, it looks a little like a transcontinental luxury train, and that's pretty much how we wanted it to behave, too.
Which it did. With the rear seats up you have 563 litres in which to put luggage without obstructing the view through the rear window. That was enough for our purposes, though if you put the seats down and were prepared to rely on the door mirrors for visibility you would have access to a thundering 1658 litres. Passenger space is excellent in front and rear, and in this high-level Executive trim the seats are splendidly supportive.
You'd want a relaxing ride, and you get it. The C5 estate is far too big to be whisked along twisty roads in a joyful manner, though it will cover the ground quite well as long as you're patient with it. On A roads and motorways, though, it just wafts along on its Hydractive suspension, and the sense of relaxed cruising is enhanced in this model by the fact that the two-litre turbo diesel engine is remarkably quiet.
It's also decently powerful. Again, the size of the car dictates that you wouldn't mistake it for a dragster, but there's enough mid-range urge for the job, and I never felt the need for more acceleration than the C5 could give me. Not having checked fuel usage carefully, I can't speak for Citroen's claim of 47.1mpg overall economy, except to say that with such enormous gaps between refuelling stops I can quite believe it.
On the other hand, by the time you were in a position to appreciate the low running costs you would already have coughed up a sizeable sum. The list price is £21,195, but that's just the beginning of the story.
In Exclusive form the C5 boasts a memorable array of equipment including a cruise control, traction control, 6-CD autochanger, Trafficmaster Oracle warning system (very useful), electrically adjustable front seats, front-and-rear parking assistance, headlamp washer jets and other items too numerous to mention . . . except that I will mention the facility whereby the headlamps follow the direction of the front wheels, which is so brilliant that it almost makes me forgive them for switching on when the sensors decide - even if you disagree - that they are needed.
All this is covered in the basic £21,195, but that's just the beginning of the story. The test car was tricked out with metallic paint, a lane departure warning system, leather upholstery and an excellent NaviDrive pack (including satellite navigation displayed on a colour screen and a phone), which send the price shooting up to £24,620. Well, you could buy any one of several Jaguars for that. Admittedly, you couldn't buy a Jaguar that would carry as much luggage as the Citroen did, or transport four full-scale adults in quite such comfort. But still. A Jaguar. I mean to say.
There's a slight sense that Citroen is trying to punch above its natural weight here. The C5 is reasonably luxurious, at least in this specification, but that luxury is added to the car in the form of all the extra equipment. It does not feel inherent to the basic C5. And a manufacturer which regularly produced cars in this price range would be unlikely to have made the mistake of designing the central display screen in such a way that the top row of figures (including such useful information as the time and outside temperature) can't be seen by a driver taller than six feet unless he or she bends down and sideways to bring them into vision.
I was able to live with that kind of thing during the test because I knew it was a temporary situation. Whether or not I'd be willing to accept it if I'd had to write out a cheque for nearly £25,000 is something else entirely, even though the high equipment levels and impressive interior space would certainly tempt me.
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