Citroen C5

[Jerry]

What do you guys think of this car - I rather like it.

http://www.citroenc5.co.uk/showroom.asp

Looking for something economical and good value to replace the BMW (or maybe ST). One car is too expensive and the other uses too much fuel.

Also, thought about Volvo C30, Afasud, Mazda 6, Mazda MX5, Mondeo and Clio - chalk and cheese I know.

[JLD]

Julie and I were only talking last night about the possibility of getting a Mazda 6.

http://www.mazda.co.uk/Showroom/Mazda6/

[Jerry]

Excellent value for money. Think it all depends on the deal TBH!

Sat in the Mazda6 today John - VERY NICE too.

[cherrybusa]

Check out the C5 Advertising on yahoo Videos - several including Sean Connery, although the 'Best German Car' one is best IMHO.

[FATurbo - EXPRESS]

Citroen seem to have a good range of vehicles at the moment. Not sure about the C3 though. Getting a bit long in the tooth.

Saw the advert on TV tonight. Alison and I thought for a moment it was an advert for a new Audi. We thought it was a new A4.

It's that good. Certainly looks the part. However, wouldn't buy brand new. Sadly Citroen cars don't hold their value. Our C4 lost over a third of its value in the first year. We bought it when it was some 10 months old:D

[FATurbo - EXPRESS]

The front looks rather like the C4.

[Jerry]

The front looks rather like the C4.

Paul, I rather like it and I agree after seeing the advert I thought it was the new A4 for a minute. Best not conform and buy something different I thought.

Do you like it?

Like John I like the Mazda6 too, Max has said she likes the MX5. Time to downsize "money' wise I think.

[TechnoGoat]

Like John I like the Mazda6 too, Max has said she likes the MX5. Time to downsize "money' wise I think.

No mention of a insane higher-than-a-160 for Road Tax NAC MG TF then?
I'll get my coat ;)

[Jerry]

No mention of a insane higher-than-a-160 for Road Tax NAC MG TF then?
I'll get my coat ;)

If the car was available and priced sensibly it would be considered. I think its time to move on. Plus, if it is launched who is going to be the guinea pig purchaser, doing some testing to iron out the production wrinkles?

[Rally Matt]

I would never touch a French car again, and in particular a Citron. Buy a Mondeo.

[Jerry]

I would never touch a French car again, and in particular a Citron. Buy a Mondeo.

Mondeo is a very fine car - just don't fancy another Ford.

Matt hear what you are saying about French cars in particular the C5, surely like all manufacturing the quality must have improved drastically since the time you were working with them.

What of the little Clio 197 Cup?

Fat-turbo - have you experienced any problems with your C4?

JLD - your Peugeots?

[JLD]

I can honestly say that the past year with my 206, clocking up just over 30k miles, has been the most reliable I can remember.
Julie and her daughter also have Pugs and they too have been entirely reliable.

[FATurbo - EXPRESS]

What of the little Clio 197 Cup?

Fat-turbo - have you experienced any problems with your C4?



We've had no problems to date in the six months of ownership. Previously had 3 Peugeot's 205's. One an XS and two GTi's. Once again found to be truely reliable.

I do like the look of the new Renault Clio though.

[Jerry]

We've had no problems to date in the six months of ownership. Previously had 3 Peugeot's 205's. One an XS and two GTi's. Once again found to be truely reliable.

I do like the look of the new Renault Clio though.

Paul, I agree and in 197 Cup form is a real beauty. Ideal commute vehicle.

[FATurbo - EXPRESS]

Personally I just love the new FIAT 500. Competitively priced, well specced, looks the part and I suspect will rob sales from MINI. Subject to a test drive I'd go and have a 500 Lounge Diesel now if I were in the market place for a new car.

[Jerry]

Personally I just love the new FIAT 500. Competitively priced, well specced, looks the part and I suspect will rob sales from MINI. Subject to a test drive I'd go and have a 500 Lounge Diesel now if I were in the market place for a new car.

Nope,do not like he FIAT 500. It's a pastiche of a vehicle (plus its smells of Garlic).

[Rally Matt]

I have to say that the new C5 looks great, but an ex boss owns a Citron dealership and it seems while generally some things are better French electrics and attitude to warranty claims seems to be just the same as it always was, bad at best.

Certainly not a car to buy new, even in France the depreciation on big french barges is suicidal.

If you must, give it 6-8 months and you will be able to buy a pre reg delivery mile fully loaded on for almost half price.

I like the new 500 but I am a FIAT fan. Its a very good interpretaion of the classic 500 with some real quality edge to it. It looks like an expensive small car although its very good value. Not sure it will take many sales from MINI as I think the customers are very different, more likely to give the bettle a hammering and top end Superminis.

New Bravo is a stunning car, an good warranty/deals on it too.

I still think in the class, the latest Mondeo is the top dog. Forget the Ford badge, tape over it, you will not belive its from the same people that only a few years ago were turing out the turd that was the Escort 3/4/5

[Byron]

New Fiat Bravo has got a 5 year warrenty and that speak's volumes for the faith fiat must have in that car, i have to say we past our fiat dealer tonight and i said to Jane i fancy a bravo so i don't know how long the Jazz will be with us.

I have also got a trump card aswell which i found out over the weekend i can buy car's through the mod and get massive discount's on silly car's,so it's just a case of get the job i want and thing's could change quickly on the car front high powered brit/german car :D ;)

[Jerry]

Clarkson Reviews it in the Sunday Times.

Click here! (http://driving.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/driving/jeremy_clarkson/article3898849.ece?&EMC-Bltn=4MCXZ8)

Press a button and pray it’s the right one

My eyes don’t work any more. When I dial a number on my mobile, it’s only through sheer blind luck that I get through to the right person. And as for texts – forget it. Then there’s the bothersome business of going out to eat. Most restaurants provide mood lighting, which is wonderful if you are dining with a moose but not so wonderful if – as is normal – the menu is printed in the sort of typeface that’s usually seen on microdots. Mostly, I just point and hope that I’ve managed to miss the marzipan pie with grated butter beans.
person. And as for texts – forget it. Then there’s the bothersome business of going out to eat. Most restaurants provide mood lighting, which is wonderful if you are dining with a moose but not so wonderful if – as is normal – the menu is printed in the sort of typeface that’s usually seen on microdots. Mostly, I just point and hope that I’ve managed to miss the marzipan pie with grated butter beans.

Of course, I should go to the opticians but I’m afraid this isn’t possible because, before giving me a pair of spectacles, they will look into my eyes with machinery . . . and here we hit on the problem.

I’m not a squeamish man. I am never unduly troubled by scenes on the news that the BBC’s editorial policy unit has deemed worthy of a warning about “graphic violence and bloodshed”. I can kill a chicken. I could amputate a gangrenous leg. I can even graze the internet and not be constantly fearful that I’m going to be so revolted by something that pops onto the screen that I’ll vomit into the keyboard.

But eyes? No. I can’t even think about them without going queasy. When my daughter needed an operation to correct a squint, the doctor explained the procedure to me, after which I had to be brought round with smelling salts. I have to fast-forward “that bit” in Kill Bill 2, and I have never once used eyedrops. It would be impossible.

As a result of all this, I buy my reading glasses from the only shops I ever visit, which are in airport departure lounges. This is not easy because the instructions you have to follow before deciding what sort of lens you need are printed in a typeface smaller than most bacteria.

Consequently, I usually end up with a pair of specs that require me to position a book six seats in front of where I’m sitting on the plane. Or so close to my face that it actually squashes my nose.

And here’s the really bad bit. The glasses you buy over the counter are a big joke – one that’s being played by the Chinese, I expect. They are held together with nuts and bolts so small that when they come undone – and they do, all the time – you need a carbon nanotube to do them up again. And of course you don’t have a carbon nanotube with you because you’re on a plane, and such things – along with shampoo and tennis rackets – aren’t allowed on planes. What’s more, you don’t even have your reading glasses because they’re in four pieces on your left knee.

I wouldn’t mind, but even if you are not squeamish about eyes, and you make regular trips to the opticians and have a pair of lenses that are perfectly suited to your particular condition, you will look like an ocean-going idiot.

Everyone chooses their specs to make a statement – to make them look interesting or sexy or wise – whereas in fact all spectacles do is tell the world that your body doesn’t work properly. Choosing purple frames merely highlights that fact. It’s like being diagnosed with erectile dysfunction and then buying trousers that have no fly.

So maybe the only solution is that we do without glasses and spend the rest of our lives with a headache from the strain, eating marzipan and butter beans. Or that the worlds of industry and catering accept that half of their customers struggle with anything smaller than 72-point bold type, and that they reprint their instructions and menus to suit.

This brings me nicely to the dashboard of the new Citroën C5. My demonstrator had a 7in 16:9 television screen with a built-in GSM telephone, a radio, a CD player, iPod connectivity, a 10GB hard drive to store music and GPS navigation with traffic alerts and a bird’s-eye-view map.

In addition, there was an electronic parking brake (complete with a system that prevents the car rolling back on hill starts), cruise control and an adjustable speed limiter. And then, in no particular order, I had parking sensors, electrically adjusted seats that vibrate if you stray out of your lane, directional headlamps, switchable suspension, ride-height adjustment, traction control, a dual-zone air-conditioning system, hazard warning lights that come on when you brake hard, an electronic stability program, an electrochrome rear-view mirror, rain-sensing wipers, dark-sensing headlamps, a trip computer, a tyre-pressure monitor . . .

This car made a Mercedes S-class look like the back end of a Cornish cave, and while that’s wonderful, unfortunately all of these things have to be operated with buttons that are mostly the size of pinheads because that’s the only way they can get them all in. It is therefore impossible to find them and even more impossible to read what any of them do, at least not without reaching for your reading glasses, which is tricky when you’re on the move.

Honestly, in a whole week I was unable to activate the sat nav, and any attempt to set the cruise control usually resulted in Ken Bruce being replaced by traction control. To operate the horn you ideally need a head torch and a cocktail stick.

However, I could clearly see that the new C5 was a very handsome car. It sits among other four-door saloons – from BMW, Audi, Ford, Honda and so on – looking much like Angelina Jolie would while sitting in a Wakefield bus queue.

What’s more, we are told it’s no longer built by uninterested Algerians in a factory made from straw, and that as a result it is somehow German. Obviously there’s no way of knowing at this stage whether any of this is true, but I doubt that it is. The French have never been able to make a car that lasts, any more than the Germans have been able to make a soufflé.

What is certain is that the C5 is more comfortable than any German rival. My test car had hydropneumatic suspension, which really does isolate you from the pain of a badly made road. It also means it handles like a blancmange, although to get round that problem you can reach for the “sport” button – which turns on the CD player.

I liked driving this car. I liked looking at it. I liked the sheer surprise of pressing a button and then trying to work out what I’d done. There’s one obstacle, however, that I’d have to jump before I signed on the dotted line.

In the past few years Citroën has struggled to make its products popular in Britain. Or indeed anywhere where people walk on their back legs. So, to get round that, it’s indulged in a business strategy that most experts would call “a bit daft”.

First, it has offered its cars at enticingly low prices and then garnished them with cashbacks, 0% finance and the promise of a Thai massage for everyone buying one before the end of May. I sometimes get the impression there are so many incentives on a Citroën C3, for example, that if you buy one the dealer will give you £40. And some of his daughters.

Of course, this policy doesn’t really work for you because if you can buy a Citroën new for minus £40, what’s it going to be worth when you want to sell? And obviously it doesn’t work for Citroën either, but that hasn’t stopped the company. In about five minutes I found a Citroën dealer willing to offer me a new C5 with well over a thousand quid knocked off its list price.

Of course there was probably some detailed small print attached to the offer. But, needless to say, I couldn’t have read it.

Vital statistics

Model: Citroën C5 2.7 HDi V6 Exclusive
Engine: 2720cc, six cylinders
Power: 208bhp @ 4000rpm
Torque: 325 lb ft @ 1900rpm
Transmission: Six-speed automatic
Fuel: 33.6mpg (combined cycle)
CO2: 223g/km
Acceleration: 0-62mph: 9.6sec
Top speed: 139mph
Price: £24,395
Road tax: band F (£210 for 12 months)
On sale: Now
Verdict: Should play harder to get

[Lord Sward]

Spent a day using a Clio 197 last week. Didn't do anything for me.

MX-5 all the way if you're bored with Ford. No way would I choose a Mazda 6over a Mondeo though.