It’s not a station wagon or sedan, it’s a crossover, but it’s not an SUV. A taller chassis and body with a flowing roof, where have we seen this before? Well, of course – this is a sister model of the Peugeot 408, but apart from the basic silhouette, power units and some technical elements, they don’t have much in common. The Citroën is longer, rounder and, above all, has a completely different chassis setup. Even in the lower trims, it gets well-thought-out shock absorbers with hydraulic stops, in the top version it has a fully adaptive chassis.
And it works. This car really drives above average in comfort, which is exactly the quality you’d expect from a big Citroën. The feeling of exceptional comfort is further enhanced by the high-quality interior with comfortable seats and premium materials and, above all, excellent sound insulation. Even when driving outside the city, when the car relies on a petrol engine, there is a pleasant calm inside, and in most cases you either do not hear the growl of the four-cylinder engine at all, or only very far away. In the city, the plug-in hybrid system comes into play and, of course, driving on electricity is almost perfectly silent.
There are a few hiccups. The infotainment controls are a bit clunky and may seem unnecessarily complicated for some users. In addition, some functions of the car can only be controlled through it – which, in my opinion, is a fault with the lane keeping system. These driving assistants should be able to control – including turning off – even the blind, using dedicated hardware buttons. Also, driving comfort, which is almost perfect in the districts, sometimes deteriorates slightly in the city. Big, heavy wheels force the chassis to tame too much unsprung weight, and some series of potholes manage to sneak a thump and knock into the otherwise quiet and peaceful interior, which is a bit of a shame.
I was also slightly embarrassed by the brake pedal setting, which behaves inconsistently at low speeds, and stopping the car really smoothly requires an unnecessary amount of concentration, and sometimes you just don’t succeed anyway. Overall, however, it can be said that all the listed errors are only minor, you can learn to live with them and, above all, they can very well be excused by the purchase price. Citroën has set its pricing policy in a really interesting way. The top-spec unit tested with a plug-in hybrid drive only slightly crossed the million mark, and if you can get by with a three-cylinder 1200 (which convinced me in the Peugeot 408 that there is no need to fear it), you can have this big, spacious, interesting design and quite a representative car from just under CZK 700,000. You can see more findings from the weekly testing in the video.
