COMFORT ZONE Cheap and cheerful Citroën the perfect family ‘skip’

CHOOSING a new car can cause many folk to get their knickers knotted.

Letting your heart rule your head is the first and most common stumbling block.

Obviously, if you value what you’ve worked for, this tendency is best avoided.

First rule: be brutally honest about what you actually need.

Secondly: be brutally honest about how much money you can afford to spend – be that monthly payments or a lump sum.

Thirdly: be brutally honest about how much you’re going to use it and for what.

Take this Citroën C3 Aircross for instance: A car. A means of moving stuff – animal, vegetable or mineral – from point to point. A carrier of goods and chattels – to a spec’, to a price.

Cash prices – if my 20 minutes of surfing are anything to go by

– are open to negotiation.

There are enough preregistered, new cars floating about to open up some bargaining leverage for the cashclutching customer. I found discounts of almost £3,000 without too much trouble.

But people rarely buy cash nowadays. PCP, or Personal Contract Purchase, is a form of loan at a cheap rate which has become popular, but you never actually own the car.

And there are other tailored finance packages to help you “own”.

PCP prices on the C3 Aircross start at £179 per month and can be over three or four-year plans, and it’s the same with finance. Too many options to discuss here, so talk to your local dealer for more info, etc.

So what is the C3 Aircross? Well it’s roomy, airy and very distinctive. The same can be said of the interior, which looks as though the designers might have been tootin’ on some exotic roll-ups.

The looks – particularly the ride height – scream off-roader but it’s not. It’s a styling exercise, a point borne out by all-wheel drive not being an option, although it does get an easy-to-use Grip Control system to handle different surfaces as a £400 option on the top two spec levels.

No, the Aircross is merely an MPV in SUV’s clothing. Like a sheep in wolf ’s clothing but less poetic.

Think family “skip” and you’d be closer to the mark. Top-spec models get a handy sliding rear bench seat and a front passenger seat that folds flat. Just the job for trips to leading Swedish flat-pack emporiums.

Softly sprung and softly damped, the Aircross offers a comfy ride for its occupants as long as you don’t drive it too fast. If you do, there’s a lot of sway and pitch. It doesn’t like speed humps either, with the suspension topping out so quickly and so loudly it sounds like you’ve left the tailgate open. I know because I stopped to check I hadn’t.

I hadn’t.

Engine options err on the frugal side. I drove the 110bhp 1.2-litre, three cylinder petrol which is bloody lovely, seeing as you asked. It’s gruffsounding in a nice way, flexible, nippy and capable of north of 50mpg in real world driving conditions.

The same engine is available in 130bhp guise and there’s a 1.5 diseasel, too, if near-70mpg and high mileages are your thang.

The Aircross comes in three trim levels – Touch, Feel and Flair – with massive “personalisation” options for interior trim and paint, including contrasting roof panel colours. No, I don’t know why you’d bother, either.

With five Euro NCAP safety stars and a three-year warranty, the Aircross could prove a smart buy as a small, adaptable family car.

I’m struggling to think of a roomier car in this class for similar money. And that’s what I was waffling about in the first place. Know what you want. Know what you need. Be honest. Be real.

If you want a practical family car with plenty of space inside, and you can afford the monthly payments, the Aircross might be worth a test drive.