A premium SUV with some French flair

TOYOTA did it with Lexus, Nissan with Infiniti and more recently Citroen has diversified into the premium segment with its DS offshoot brand.

It’s undoubtedly a difficult act to pull off, as Nissan is still finding with Infiniti, and the jury is still out on whether PSA can make a success of its DS venture. As far as that journey goes the DS7 is probably the best proof yet that it means business.

The stylish and sporty DS3 supermini was the first DS, even if it was actually still under the Citroen umbrella at its launch.

It was subsequently joined by the DS4, DS4 Crossback and DS5 but the DS 7 Crossback is really the first DS proper and a statement of serious intent that it is a genuine competitor in the premium segment.

In fairness the designers have a done a great job with it in almost every respect and initial exterior impressions are of an elegant and sleek-looking vehicle. Given it’s an SUV, that can be a hard act to pull off.

It’s not the easiest thing in the world to inject a bit of panache into the kind of vehicle that at its heart still has what is a basic boxy design blueprint.

The DS 7 certainly has an element of French flair, evoking the sort of style the French car maker was once famed for. I say this not just from my own perspective but because I got to see just how much it was admired in its home market during an extended period behind the wheel.

I ended up taking it ‘home’ to France with a summer jaunt to Brittany.

The admiring glances started on UK soil, when the ferry crew gathered around it in significant numbers after I had parked it up on the car deck.

This set a trend for the entire trip and pretty much everywhere we went it

was the centre of attention. People stopped in their tracks and turned their heads to follow its progress along the narrow cobbled streets in Dinard and when I parked up on the pier small crowds gathered to take a closer look and peer through the windows. On occasion car lovers would engage me in conversation to tell me what a beautiful car it was and ask me what I thought of it.

Okay, so French people like F French cars and the DS 7 is still fa fairly new – there aren’t many of them about – but I don’t im imagine I would have attracted m more attention if I’d been drivin ing around in a Lamborghini A Aventador.

Good looks apart, does the DS 7 Crossback cut it as a genuine premium contender, capable of taking on the likes of Audi, BMW, Mercedes and Jaguar?

My honest opinion is yes it does, though whether the issue of badge snobbery will come into play remains to be seen.