SA Roadtests
South Africa
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This is the home of automobile road tests in South Africa. We drive South African cars, SUVs and LCVs under South African conditions. It also just happens that most of the vehicles we drive are world cars as well, so what you read here probably applies to the models you can get at home.
*To read one of our road tests, just select from the menu on the left.
*Please remember too, that prices quoted were those ruling on the days I wrote the reports.
Published in The Witness Motoring on Wednesday February 22, 2012
A pair of sporty DS4s you ask? That’s right, we drove a THP 200 Sport with a 1600 cc engine and an HDi 160 Sport that’s a two-litre. Now that everyone’s completely baffled, let us explain: The numbers refer to BHP ratings and have nothing to do with cubic centimetres. The THP 200 uses a 1598 cc, 147 kW petrol engine developed in partnership with BMW while the THP 160 has a 1997 cc, 120 kW diesel that morphed from PSA’s own DW10 engine during a partnership with Ford.
The car is the second in a series of luxury interpretations of existing models - C3, C4 and C5. The original DS was, of course, the DS19 of 1955 and its successor the DS21 that soldiered on until the nomenclature was discontinued in 1975. The DS4 is more than a gussied-up C4 though; it deviates slightly from the base car’s design theme, combining coupë styling with four-door practicality and a touch of SUV-like height.
Rear door handles are hidden in the window frames, creating the illusion of a high-standing, yet sleek, two-door configuration. The only drawback of this exoticness is that the back windows are too long to fit into the lower doors, so cannot wind down. Most people drive with the air conditioner on and back seat passengers are usually quite rare, so it would only be problematic for some.
The luxurious interior features an enveloping driving position with chrome-surround dials focused directly towards the driver’s eye-line, and the sculptured dashboard uses quality materials for a superior feel. There is chrome detailing on air vent surrounds, gearlever and centre console, while aluminium pedals, embossed leather door handles and ambient interior lighting are further examples of Citroën’s attention to detail.
Owners can personalise the inside with a choice of three leather combinations including two-tone, or a “bracelet” design on the seats that hints at the links on the strap of an expensive watch. Front seats feature heating, lumbar adjustment and gentle massaging functions for travel-weary muscles, in addition to the usual horizontal and vertical adjustments.
There is even a tray under the passenger seat for documents or personal items. It won’t take an A4 page without folding, but it's deep enough for a current Jilly Cooper novel if that’s more your style. The audio system’s software delivers high-quality, authentic sound evenly throughout the cabin and there are auxiliary and USB input sockets as well.
The boot is big and square with two side nooks, one of which is netted, a torch, a 12-volt socket and a pair of bag hooks. The spare is a spacesaver and both test cars provided puncture kits with pumps – most thoughtful. Rear seatbacks tumble two-thirds, one-third and feature a ski slot for long and slender items. Lift-up screens that let you increase the height of the front windscreen, to flood the interior with natural light on cooler days, are a welcome touch.
Safety kit includes ABS brakes with EBD and EBA, ESP with intelligent traction control, hill start assist and six airbags. Naturally, one also gets programmable cruise control with speed limiter, a parking space gap measurer, ISOFix anchorages and powered child safety locks. More? How about front fog lamps with cornering function, automatic headlamps and rain-sensing wipers?
Bluetooth, an on-board computer, dual-zone automatic air conditioning and electro-hydraulic power steering are included. Electro-hydraulic simply means that an electric motor, rather than a belt running off the engine, drives the good old-fashioned hydraulic power steering that was sharpened for these models. Other DS kit includes stiffened suspension to make it handle better and bigger brake discs on the THP 200.
Both cars drive and handle very well, with the diesel being so quiet inside that one hardly notices any difference. Luckily, the rev. counter glows bright red just before the limiter kicks in, to scold you for being foolish. While the more powerful petrol engine gives slightly quicker acceleration times and a higher top speed, who really needs it? Identical pricing simply makes the choice more difficult.
The petrol version is a South African 2012 Car of the Year finalist, as was its baby sister DS3 last year. Second time lucky? We’ll see.
The numbers
Price (both): R325 900
Engines:
HDi 160 – 1997 cc, four-cylinder, turbodiesel
Power: 120 kW at 3750 rpm
Torque: 340 Nm at 2000 rpm
THP 200 – 1598 cc, four-cylinder, turbopetrol
Power: 147 kW at 5800 rpm
Torque: 275 Nm at 1700 rpm
Gearboxes: 6-speed manual
Zero to 100 km/h: 7,9 seconds (petrol), 8,6 seconds (diesel)
Maximum speed: 235 km/h (petrol). 212 km/h (diesel)
Real life fuel consumption: about 8,1 l/100 km (petrol), about 7,2 l/100 km (diesel)
Tank: 60 litres
Warranty: 3 years/100 000 km – 5 years/100 000 km available optionally
Service plan: 5 years/100 000 km – 5 years/100 000 km maintenance plan optional
This is a one-man show, which means that road test cars entrusted to me are driven only by me. Some reviewers hand test cars over to their partners to use as day-to-day transport and barely experience them for themselves.
What this means to you is that every car reviewed is given my own personal evaluation and receives my own seat of the pants judgement - no second hand input here.
Every car goes through real world testing; on city streets littered with potholes, speed bumps and rumble strips, on freeways and if its profile demands, dirt roads as well.
My articles appear every Wednesday in the motoring pages of The Witness, South Africa's oldest continuously running newspaper, and occasionally on Saturdays in Weekend Witness as well. I drive eight to ten vehicles most months of the year (press cars are withdrawn over the festive season - wonder why?) so not everything gets published in the paper. Those that are, get a tagline but the rest is virgin, unpublished and unedited by the political-correctness police. Hope you like what you see, because there are no commercial interests at work here. As quite a few readers have found, I answer every serious enquiry from my home email address, with my phone numbers attached, so I do actually exist.
I am based in Pietermaritzburg, KZN, South Africa. This is the central hub of the KZN Midlands farming community; the place farmers go to buy their supplies and equipment, truck their goods to market, send their kids to school and go to kick back and relax.
So occasionally a cow, a goat or a horse may add a little local colour by finding its way into the story or one of the pictures. It's all part of the ambience!
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SA Roadtests
South Africa
ctjag8