Citroen C5Aircross
REPORT 3
£ 28,330 OTR/£29,400 as tested/£290pcm
WHY IT’S HERE
Do crossovers work best when they’re determinedly anti-sporty?
DRIVER
Paul Horrell
THE AIRCROSS IS AN MPV MASQUERADING AS AN SUV. SO IT’S GOT three individual sliding/folding/reclining back seats. I figured I’d be needing to shift a couple forward because we were carrying a lot in the boot.
A folding bike, for starters – a bulky one with 26in wheels. Alongside that was the kit for a moderately outdoorsy week for three people, the equivalent of about five or six airline-sized holdalls. But no, it all went in without having to disturb the seats at all. The boot is isn’t just big fore-aft, but amazingly so top-to-bottom, and still has a space-saver spare beneath. That’s an advantage of not having actual 4x4 machinery down below.
So in that all went. Then another two bikes on the tail. Whereupon the polysomething tailgate flexed slightly under the bike rack’s weight, setting off a maddeningly loud ‘door open’ chime, and preventing the doors from locking. Only after several ginger attempts to re-close it, and some messing about with the electric tailgate settings, did it seat properly.
I can’t see the advantage of electric tailgates when they’re so much slower than manual ones. Even if you switch them off, they still leave their mechanism engaged, so you’re pushing against extra resistance versus normal, old-fashioned gas struts – something that didn’t need reinventing.
Once we’d set off, the Aircross suspension is so soft in the middle of its travel I could feel a little extra pitching from the weight of the bikes cantilevered out back. Never mind, soft is just what you want, rather than having the rack jump up and down at every little pothole.
I prefer bikes on the tail to bikes on the roof because they don’t seem to knacker the aero so much. Do a long trip and you’ve often spent on extra fuel the price of hiring bikes when you get there. But with them on the tail, and slightly moderated speed, the Aircross kept to its usual mid-30s mpg.