Ghost of Christmas present
Expandable Aircross proves its worth as a practical family car on the festive run
MILEAGE 5615 WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT To see if this quirkiest of compact crossovers has more to offer than its head-turning styling
Since arriving on the fleet, the Aircross has rarely been called on to shift loads larger than the weekly supermarket shop, or a couple of suitcases for a long weekend. A week-long Christmas break spent visiting relatives across various parts of the country was a great opportunity for it to demonstrate just how practical it could be, with a full contingent of bags, presents, passengers and other miscellaneous holiday knick-knacks to carry.
The first leg, with only driver and one passenger to accommodate, went as smoothly as you might expect. There was no need to lift the false floor or adjust the sliding rear bench seat to make extra room in the boot. It comfortably swallowed two suitcases, two bags of presents and a terrifying number of pine needles from when I’d collected the Christmas tree a week before (the 60/40 split rear seats ensuring the only tree trouble we had was actually fitting it through the front door).
Have I driven more exciting things home for Christmas? Absolutely. Did the Citroën disappoint in 2018? Not at all. Having incurred the wrath of certain family members the previous two years for my choice of car, the Aircross went down surprisingly well. (In 2016, an Audi S5 was too low, apparently, and tricky to get in and out of. A year later, an Audi R8 was loud enough to wake the dead, and two seats meant I couldn’t be the designated driver, y’see.) The slightly elevated ride made it “much easier to clamber into” than my parents’ BMW 1 Series, and the styling was variously described as “funky”, “exciting” and “cool”. So largely a success, then.
I racked up around 700 miles over the holiday, which mainly consisted of motorway driving. I quickly discovered the C3 isn’t a car that will have you searching out the more exciting routes, and is quite happy to stick to the motorways. This saw the Aircross deliver economy figures in the low 40s (according to my maths). The trip computer is still erring on the optimistic side, but has largely settled down from the first few thousand miles, where the figures were a bit more sporadic.
It was only the final stage of the journey, returning to London with two friends fresh off a plane after a week of winter sun, that we reached the limit of the C3’s storage. Two extra full-size suitcases in the boot meant several bags had to be relocated to one of the rear seats, even with the false floor removed and rear bench extended.
Unless you really don’t like your friends or family, you can’t fully extend the rear bench and still use it for rear passengers. Fitting a few child seats back there? Grand, extend all you like. But anyone with legs is going to suffer, so a compromise on luggage capacity was in order. Still, no one had to be buried, Tetris-style, under a heap of bags and coats, and I had no complaints about space all the way back to London, which I count as a win for the Citroën.
I also need to give a special thank you to Autocar reader Craig Thorley, who got in touch over the festive break to offer a solution to my complaint in a previous report about the C3’s touch-sensitive infotainment controls. He noted that a three-finger tap would activate an on-screen menu, presenting large icons for navigation, radio and heating controls. These are far easier to hit than the tiny icons at either side of the screen, and so less distracting to use while driving.
It’s a shame this handy function only works when you’re in the main Citroën UI, though, as I spend most of my time behind the wheel with Android Auto handling navigation and multimedia – meaning I still have to use the small buttons to adjust the heating. Still, it’s a useful feature for Citroën owners who are sticking with the built-in nav system.