SA Road Tests

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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.
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We try Citroën’s 2012 DS5 THP200 Sport cross-country express

Quick, quiet, luxurious

Published in The Witness Motoring on Wednesday August 15, 2012

Elderly Citroënistes could bore you silly with tales of  original DS models from the ‘fifties-to-'seventies, but apart from directional headlights and looking very aeronautical inside, those early cars and today’s DS5 have little in common. Step one is to forget about plush hydro-pneumatic suspension. Modern DSs use steel springs and gas-filled shock absorbers, so their forte is less ‘Provincial cobblestones’ and more ‘intercontinental freeway.’

The DS5 under review doesn’t even sit on the same platform as its sister CS5, instead sharing PF2 underpinnings with the 3008 and C4 Picasso. Its forerunner was Citroën C-SportLounge, Jean-Pierre Ploué’s concept car with aircraft-like interior styling, unveiled at Frankfurt in 2005. Outward appearance is a combination of hatchback and estate, looking rather like what Brits used to call a “shooting brake.”

Its interior is streets away from your usual idea of what a luxury car should look like. The squared-off steering wheel would look quite at home in a ship or aircraft, while deeply hooded dials, D-shaped with a conventionally arced speedometer in between and the music, satnav and computer centre are unlike any you have seen before. Window switches and scrolling wheel on the lower console and an overhead control centre with yet more switches and a pair of sunspecs boxes, place pilot and navigator in an environment more reminiscent of Boeing than boulevard. Further, if you have any soul at all, you will spring for the optional R14 000 Sport package that gives you an uprated music system, lane departure warning, high-beam assistance and those gotta-have watchstrap-inspired leather seats.

Apart from looking like a million bucks, they warm your tush, vibrate your cares away, pamper your lower back with adjustable lumbar support and do all the other stuff that seats are supposed to do. They also have two memory settings and extend to support longer thighs. Among the overhead switches mentioned earlier, are controls for not one, but three rooftop sun blinds. That’s one each for driver, front passenger and those in the back. The heads-up display is controlled from there too.

We could write you a long list of all the electronic aids and safety kit fitted to this car, but it would just make your eyes glaze over. Let’s simply say that if it isn’t there, you wouldn’t notice anyway, because while decently quick, the DS5 is more luxury express than twitchy, rock-hard road rocket. Let’s clear a point – while not set up like a ‘Ring racer, the DS5 could certainly use more comfortable springing. It hates rough asphalt and grooved or rippled concrete. Potholes and speed humps are not high on its list of favourites either. Taking it calmly over rough stuff and giving it horns on decent surfaces is what this car likes best.

It’s built for long open roads, far from the greedy eyes of Officer Aggro. It’s quick, it’s quiet and it’s smooth. The six-speed manual ‘box shifts quickly and positively; not quite notchy, more like click-click. Ratios are nicely spread without any uncomfortable gaps. It hauls ass too, easily carrying three adults in top gear up Key Ridge when called on to do so.

What’s most surprising is that its heart is that of a small BMW, a little 1600 with ‘way too much attitude. It puts out a solid 147 kW, equal to 200 horsepower, hence the “200” in its name. The secret is not to think of it as a 1600, but rather as an engine that happens to develop some solid muscle. Pretend it’s an original DS 19 or 21; on vitamins.

The numbers
Price: R395 500
Engine: 1598 cc, DOHC, 16-valve, four-cylinder
Power: 147 kW at 6000 rpm
Torque: 275 Nm at 1700 rpm
Zero to 100 km/h: 8,7 seconds
Maximum speed: 235 km/h
Real life fuel economy: About 8,4 l/100 km
Tank: 60 litres
Boot: 468 litres                                                                                                          Spare wheel: None - pump and kit only
Warranty: 3 years/100 000 km
Service plan: 5 years/100 000 km
Optional: 5 year/100 000 km warranty and full maintenance plan




What We Do

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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