Citroen DS5: An argument between your heart and your head

It's supposed to be the summer, but because of nasty global warming, it's raining. It has been, for sometime actually. There is a green persuasion. We will blame it on global warming, and therefore, the automobile, you know, that thing that gets you from A to B in relative comfort without having to interact with other human beings. But there are alternatives to the normal, nasty, polluting automobiles. You can have EV, small diesels, and even hybrids. And now, Citroen has its own hybrid. There's a difference; it's diesel, and it's very very pretty. Citroen has paid special attention to making a car that creates quite the visual impression. It's unlike anything on the road at the moment, and certainly continues the paradigm the big Citroens have to look just a little bit mad. Just look at the chrome detail on the bonnet. The concave flourishes on the rear lamps. The angles just pepper the exterior. It's a proper looker. But to make sure it's a sensible car, its hybrid tech needs to match its looks. Combining hybrid drive with diesel power in theory means we'll get a million billion miles per gallon and very few converts have molecules falling out to the back. Now Citroen claims the hybrid 4DS5, it makes just 99 grams per kilometer of CO2 and we'll get 74.3 miles per gallon on a combined cycle. Now, the system it uses uses 163 brake horsepower diesel engine and a 37 brake horsepower Leckie motor. So in total, it's about 200 brake horsepower. The interior is pretty special too. We were told that the interior design was influenced by [unk] hence the switches on the roof and you can close all the sun roofs, flip the heads up displayer. You do feel a little high [unk]. There are four distinctly different driving modes. You've got EV, auto, 4-wheel drive, and Sport. Now EV does, well pretty much exactly as you'd expect it to. Electric only for as long you've got juice in the battery. Now Auto, well that basically gets the car, as meant to be, as efficiently as possible using both a combination of the diesel and electric engine. Four-wheel drive, well, that uses both engines at the same time, so you have maximum traction at any given moment. And Sport, well, that uses both engines but the throttle response is sort of firmed up a little bit, so you end up going very very quick. I'll tell you what, this thing can shoot. It goes up to 60 in 8.6 seconds which is really quite impressive considering it weighs about as much as the moon. The only mode I really like out of all of them isn't, as you'd expect from me, Sport. It's the fun EV mode. There's two reasons for this. It's fun to cruise around town not using any fuel at all, and it's the least crashing. Now the reason to say that is because, well, the gearbox isn't spectacular. It never quite knows what it's doing. It likes to hang on to the gears for far too long. Now they can have a DS5 with just a simple 163 brake horsepower diesel engine like we've got in here, or a 200 brake horsepower petrol engine which you get in the Citroen BS3, are/or the DS4. The [unk] with the manual gearbox, and frankly, you'll be laughing. However, the DS5 isn't a car you buy because you care about vehicle handling dynamics. No, it's a car you buy because you care about aesthetics. And thankfully with the Hybrid 4, you can care about aesthetics and mother nature as well. It really is, and I hate to use this particular cliché, a heart over head thing. Should you buy one? Well, probably no. Will you buy one? Yes! And you should put it in a museum so that other people can appreciate Citroen.