Why the Citroen Spacetourer is a breath of fresh air

SOMEONE at Citroën is clearly a kindred spirit. They know what it’s like to grow up as part of a larger family – and they’ve come up with a solution.

Growing up with lots of brothers and sisters has all sorts of problems. For starters they eat into the parental funds that should rightfully be reserved for the BMX and games console of your choice, and getting ten minutes in the bathroom in the mornings requires the sort of planning that’d give the scientists at CERN sleepless nights. Growing up in that brief period of history with dial-up internet connections made it even worse; I vividly remember the rows over who got access to the one computer and the looks I’d get when a squawking modem would disconnect my sisters’ phone calls.

But worst of all was having to cram into the back of my parents’ Land Rover, because that was one of the few vehicles that had the requisite eight seats. Every childhood holiday involved sitting on side-facing benches in the back of a bouncy old 4x4, but at least Land Rovers are vaguely fashionable; just about the only alternative was sourcing a Ford Transit minibus, which would have killed my passion for cars stone dead at the age of nine.

Even today getting more than eight seats in your wagon’s tricky. At the last count I found just four on offer; Ford’s Tourneo Custom, Mercedes-Benz’s Vito Tourer, Volkswagen’s Transporter Shuttle and the badge engineered, virtually identical twins that are Renault’s Trafic and Vauxhall’s Vivaro Combi. The anoraks among you will already spotted what they’ve got in common. While none are especially nasty to drive, they’re all based on vans rather than cars.

Which is why Citroën’s new Spacetourer will be a breath of fresh air for over-productive parents and taxi firms specialising in airport runs and picking up groups of plastered partygoers from Liverpool city centre. It’s got nine seats so it’ll be able to heave each and every one of your offspring about, but rather than being a van with more windows and seats it’s basically the same as the Peugeot 308 underneath. So it’s 2014’s European Car of the Year with an extra four seatbelts.

Which is great. Someone on the other side of the Channel has realised parents who have more than five children might want to drive something other than a Transit van with some seats bolted into the back – and that hopefully will encourage other car makers to offer up rivals to the Spacetourer.

It hits the showrooms later this year – if you are looking for something vaguely interesting to cart your six children to school in it, it’s well worth thinking about.

The C4 Cactus is far from perfect - but at least you remember it

EVERYONE has a favourite Citroen. Whether you ask your mum or your best mate – or even your best mate’s mum – I reckon anyone with even an ounce of car awareness can reel off at least one of the French firm’s offerings.

It might be a rustic old 2CV or a swoopy DS. Perhaps it’s that Saxo VTS you once cheekily handbrake-turned in an empty car park, or the BX your slightly wacky relatives used to run around in. The fact you can probably recall at least one means Citroens are memorable – imagine if I’d asked you to name your favourite Kia instead. Struggling a bit?

Yet the legacy of those great cars is a manufacturer that’s forever trying to overcome a bit of an identity crisis – which is why for every wonderfully weird Xantia there’s usually a crushingly boring Xsara that almost seems to say “Sorry, we got a bit carried away earlier”. Every brief bit of brilliance seems to get hauled in with a succession of me-too models nobody remembers.

Take the C4. I loved the original, with its steering wheel boss that just floated in the upright position no matter which way you turned and the Honda CRX-esque proportions and sharp snout of the three-door model, but I can’t even remember what the current model looks like.

Which is probably why the spin-off appears to have wheels stolen from the set of Space 1999 and two giant Dairy Milks glued to its sides. The C4 Cactus is wilfully weird.

There is a genuine reason for it having those squishy, moulded blobs – park up in a tight space at the supermarket and you won’t return to find a Range Rover Evoque’s door has left a dent in yours. It also looks great despite the bonkers detailing, packs a phenomenal amount of legroom and headroom into a small(ish) space and it’s easy to drive.

The interior is as wonderfully avant-garde as the exterior – particularly the way the glovebox has been made to look like a trendy briefcase. I’m not so keen on its other trendy feature – the decision to operate every conceivable control through an iPad-esque screen. Not only does it rob the rest of the cabin of buttons and switches but it’s so fiddly, complicated and irresponsive it was actually distracting to use.

That’s before I get to the Blade Runner-esque digital dash readout that doesn’t have a rev counter, the boot lip that’s a bit too high up for heaving heavy bags of shopping and the over-assisted, feel-free steering – but I’ll forgive the irritating foibles because I like the Cactus.

In a motoring landscape where generic hatchbacks with badges like EcoBland plastered across their rumps the Cactus is a breath of fresh air. It might not be my favourite Citroen, but it’s a car you can’t forget in a hurry.

Updated Citroen C4 set for April arrival

AN UPDATED version of Citroën’s new C4 is available to order now, with the first cars arriving across the North West in April.

The French firm’s five-door family hatchback comes in three different trim levels. Prices start at £14,645 for the entry-level Puretech 110 version, which is powered by a 1.2 litre petrol engine, and rise to £20,045 for the range-topping diesel models.

Go to the manufacturer's website or pop into your nearest dealer to find out more.

How Citroen came up with the C4 Cactus

THE Parisian schoolboy put down his Crayola and hit the pause button on his Magic Roundabout DVD.

“Daddy”, he shouted excitedly in French which I’ve had to translate into Layman’s English. “I’ve managed to sort out that new hatchback you’ve been struggling with.”

The young designer’s dad, the boss of one of the biggest car companies in the whole of France, was astounded.

“That’s impossible”, he explained with an anguished tone of surprise in his voice. “My team have been working for months on this car, because it’s absolutely crucial that we come up with a rival for the Nissan Juke. You’re only seven years old. How have you managed to design it in twenty minutes?

"More to the point, what exactly are those things on the side supposed to be?”

The French firm’s brilliant new design guru paused reflectively and considered putting The Magic Roundabout back on again, but then he remembered how important this bit of extra homework was. This wasn’t just any old car doodle. This had to take on not just the Nissan Juke, but all the other jacked-up, supermini-sized hatchbacks that had already been launched to take it on.

“This is a lot more sensible than all the other cars I design when I’m at school – it’s only got four wheels, and there aren’t any machine guns or rockets on it. It’s just a normal car, like the one you and Mummy take me to school in.”

The boy’s father repeated the question. “But what is that thing on the side of it?”

“Oh sorry, dad, I forgot about that,” the youngster said. “I dropped a Dairy Milk on the paper and it melted, and now it’s stuck there.”

Dad was impressed. “Brilliant! I love it. It’s so avantgarde – no one but Citroen would think to launch a hatchback with a giant chocolate stuck to the side of it. Love the wheels too. I’ll get it signed off for production tomorrow.

“The only problem”, he explained to his pre-pubescent protégé, “is I’ve no idea what to call it. People love the Juke because it not only looks like it’s got landed from another planet, but it’s got a mad name too. So has the Vauxhall Mokka, and so has the Renault Captur”.

Citroen’s new chief designer smiled and instantly turned to his dad with a suggestion for this new, taller version of the company’s C4 hatchback, which goes on sale across the UK later this year.

“Let’s call it the Cactus, daddy”.

Seven cars shortlisted for European Car of the Year 2014

SEVEN very different cars have all been shortlisted in a contest to find Europe’s favourite automotive arrival from the past year.

Judges of the European Car of the Year award confirmed this week the Citroen C4 Picasso, Mazda3, Peugeot 308 and Skoda Octavia, which are all family-friendly and focused on value, would be going up against the eco-orientated BMW i3 and Tesla S and the luxurious new Mercedes-Benz S Class.

The winner will be announced at the Geneva Motor Show in March.

Citroën joins the off-roader party

Citroën's DS-branded line of luxury models is about to be joined by an off-roader, if this sveltly styled concept car is anything to go by.

I'm already a bit of a fan of the French firm's upmarket offerings - the rapid DS3 Racing in particular - but this latest offering, which will be officially unveiled at the Shanghai Motor Show, suggests the company is looking at grabbing a slice of the SUV cake too.

What the exact production version looks like, how much it costs and what'll it be like to drive remain as jobs for Citroën to sort out in the fullness of time, but there are one or two things I'm already sure of. Firstly, that - unlike the BMW X4 unveiled last week - it looks fabulous, although the company's claim it's got "a hynoptic stare" is just a tiny bit fatuous.

More importantly, it would be impossible for the company to make it worse than the last Citroën off-roader, the godawful C-Crosser.

Say bonjour, then, to the Citroën DS Wild Rubis...

Is the Citroen Xantia a classic car yet?

"DOES this count as a classic yet?"

Picture the scene. It's a still evening somewhere on the M3, and I'm driving a Golf BlueMotion back from an assignment in the New Forest with two fellow Classic Car Weekly writers on board. Inevitably the conversation turned to just what sort of classics the publication's new boy is into.

The ideal replacement classic - should I scrape together the funds to fill the MX-5-shaped hole in my life - is a surprisingly tall order. I get the aesthetics and the character that makes a classic car so appealing, but I'm also so butterfingered with screwdrivers and hamfisted with spanners that any frail, fettle-hungry antiques like my first Mini are right out. Within about half an hour of starting on the job someone had offered me a very fetching MK3 Allegro, but with my mechanical uselessness it'd be a British Leyland story that'd only end in tears.

In fact, my own suggestions leaned towards modern day funsters with a handy dose of reliability - take, for instance, a Peugeot 106 GTi, a Ford Puma, a Citroen AX GT or, shock horror, another MX-5. I even suggested, possibly because it was getting late, the idea of an old Escort van with a mattress stuffed into the back "because I like going camping". That's how I ended up asking if all sorts of cars I grew up with back in the Nineties have earned their classic car wings yet.

One of my fellow staffers mentioned he ran a Citroen XM - that early Nineties spaceship with the wonderfully French hydrobrilliant suspension - and that led me to a small epiphany in the form of its smaller Xantia sister. It's brilliant because it's got more than a hint of the XM's quirkiness, but it's also friendly enough not to completely alienate an automotive idiot like me. Best of all, I could track down the diesel version because Southport to CCW's Peterborough offices is quite a long way.

I reckon, should the occasion call for it, it's could be a candidate. So then, whoever it is that judges these things.... does this count as a classic yet?

Fire up the... Citroen DS5

IN the unlikely event I get asked to design a luxury car, the Citroen DS5 is probably not too far off what I'd come up with.

Surely what you want in a plushly trimmed motor is plenty of space, some clever gadgets, a comfy ride, and an interior which, while clearly cosseting, shows where a bit of thought's gone into it? Unfortunately, sales of luxury cars suggest you want sportiness and a blue-chip image instead. The best selling luxury car for this sort of outlay is BMW's 3-Series.

So what do you get if you're a middle management type and you plump for Paris over Munich, or Ingolstadt or Stuttgart for that matter? Well, you get the world's first diesel-hybrid system, and a clever one it is too; while a turbodiesel, in the case of the range-topper I tested one with 2.0 litres and 163bhp at its disposal, struts its stuff at the front end, an electric motor offers a helping hand by sending some eco-friendly oomph to the back wheels. Not only does it offer you the benefits of four wheel drive at this time of year, but it keeps things eco-friendly and, as far as the taxman's concerned, cheap to run too.

Yet what really grabs you with the DS5 is the interior. Fans of the smaller, strikingly good DS3 will find themselves in familiar territory, with the same attention to detail with the materials and use of colour but with the added flair of buttons in the roof, Boeing 747-style. It's also far roomier than any of its immediate executive car rivals, thanks to Citroen shunning the saloon norm and going for a sleek hatchback instead.

Admittedly, it's not got the same grin factor to its handling as the smaller DS3 but that's not what this luxury lounger's about - if you do a lot of motorway work and value comfort over thrills, I'd struggle to find another premium offering that does the job as comfortably.

Hand on heart, I couldn't recommend the range-topping DSport versions - not when it's straying close to Jag XF territory - but the mid-range DStyle, which Citroen reckon are going to be the biggest sellers, have got a lot going for them.

As published in The Champion on December 6, 2012

Fire up the... Citroen C1

YOU'D be forgiven for thinking that, like the US presidential election, there's only been two candidates vying for your vote in this year's small car battle. It's a straight choice between VW's Up - flanked by its Skoda and SEAT sister models - or Fiat's funky new Panda.

There is, however, a trio of equally engaging city slickers which have been missing out on most of the limelight thanks to the new arrivals. The Peugeot 107, Toyota Aygo and Citroen C1 - which are all effectively versions of each other - might have been around for ages, but thanks to some automotive nip ‘n' tuck and generous pricing they've still got plenty to offer.

The one I tried, Citroen's tiny C1, is still looking fresh thanks to a particularly effective facelift which gives it a cheekier front end than its immediate predecessor. It's a vibe that extends to the interior, with lots of body-coloured metal lining the doors and a single, enormous speedometer with a rev counter popping out of it, MINI style. True, it feels a little cheaper and flimsier than its much newer rivals but it's nicely laid out and more than well equipped for something which makes a virtue out of being small and simple.

Which brings to me to the chief joy of the Citroen's smallest offering - thanks to the engineers' obsession with saving weight, the C1 is lighter than a helium-filled malteser and about as entertaining as a result. Because there's so little weight, the 68bhp its engine serves up feels far more energetic than you'd think, and it darts down the narrowest country lanes and town centre streets with a natural agility. While it'll do motorway work more than easily enough, this car really shines when things get narrow and congested.

The Up and its siblings still feel more solid than the C1, and there's no doubt the Panda's roomier, but haggle a good deal on a C1 and you'll be laughing all the way to the bank with a small car that still makes you smile.

Are big cars better than small ones?

THE Citroen DS5, for all its clever hybrid tech and avantgarde styling, is a big car. Which is exactly why the company's PR man reckoned I wouldn't like it.

He put it to me, as he handed me the keys for the French firm's largest and most luxurious twist on its DS range yet, that I'm a small car sort of person. Having clocked the tiny sports car I'd turned up in and read my various pieces singing the praises of the original Mini, the Renault 5 and the Suzuki Swift Sport, he suggested the DS5 was just too much car for me to love.

But there are plenty of bigger beasts - motoring's plus size models, in Daily Mail speak - I've developed a soft spot for. The Jeep Grand Cherokee, for starters, might be the size of my first student flat but it's got a charm to its character and plenty of comfort, while Jag's XF is all the executive saloon you could ever ask for.

Meanwhile, the largest motor of any kind I've driven, Ford's Transit, has a no-nonsense sort of vibe to it and a deftness of handling something of its size really shouldn't. I like it a lot. Equally, there's plenty of petite offerings that haven't floated my boat - Vauxhall's Corsa, despite being one of the best selling cars in Britain, being the prime candidate. I know loads you have got one and no doubt love it, but for my money the Fiesta, the Polo and now Peugeot's new 208 will run rings around it when quality, packaging and handling come into play. But, by and large, smaller, leaner cars are better than full fat ones, and I think the car makers no know it.

Why else would the new Range Rover have shaved half a tonne - that's a whole Caterham Seven in other words - off the weight of its predecessor? By contrast, the Land Rover Defender is a big car, but crucially, it's not an inch bigger or heavier than the nation's farmers need it to be.

The other thing everybody seems to forget is that you can make cars ever larger but the roads of Britain, save for a radical new Coalition iniative, will always remain the same size. Worth remembering when you're struggling to thread one of today's more bloated hatchbacks down a typical British B road. It's not the size that matters. It's how you use it.

All of which brings me back to the DS5, which I actually rather like. Keep an eye out for Life On Cars roadtest to find out why.

Fire up the... Citroen C-Zero

IN THE dead of last winter, while everyone else was groaning about how much gritting wasn't being done, this little Citroen set a unique record.

The C-Zero, believe it or not, was the first electric car ever to successfully use Eurotunnel to make a cross-channel crossing between England and France. However, taking Le Shuttle isn't exactly hard for most cars, so in order to impress motorists on this side of Le Manche it's going to have to manage more than just the drive into a railway carriage.

Luckily the C-Zero's got green credentials on its side, being one of a trio of volt-powered vehicles all based around the design of Mitsubishi's petrol-engined I car (the other ones, in case you're interested, are Peugeot's iOn and Mitsubishi's own iMiev, which are almost identical in spec). It therefore comes with the gift of a Government grant, and an exemption from London's congestion charge if you're venturing down to the capital.

Unfortunately it also comes with the same snag that's bugging all electric cars on offer right now; you're not going to get to London without a series of lengthy recharges. It's not any fault of the car's, more a lack of charging points that'll let you recharge your batteries. Citroen's city slicker is just that; a city slicker that'll do 100 miles before you run out.

Yet - and I think this is the first time I've said this about an electric car - I like it. Unlike the Nissan LEAF, which is entirely conventional in its size and styling, the C-Zero's creators have remembered that it's unlikely to venture outside of the urban jungle and designed it to survive in its natural habitat. It's small and easy to park, the steering is light and responsive, it packs five people into a very small package and has styling that's just about cheeky enough to stand out. You forget it's an electric car. It's a small, simple car that makes you smile for small, simple reasons.

It is a fun little city car I'd happily spend £10,000 on as an eco-friendly city runabout. It's just a shame it costs £28,000, then.

A great car, then, ruined by a ridiculous pricetag.

Citroen Tubik: Why a shiny French box is my Frankfurt favourite

IS IT the blemish free autobahns or the stream of Porsches which pound limitlessly along them? Whatever it is, you only need look at their latest motorshow to know the Germans don't do things by halves.

Considering it's one of of the world's biggest automotive events I've never really wanted to visit the Frankfurt Motorshow, unless I was doing it as a sponsored walk for charity. Better journalists than I take pedometers with them on this traditionally expansive event, and can clock anything up to 20 miles to catch up with the latest cars. Even looking through the manufacturers' news releases, hundreds of miles away in the comfort of The Champion office, hurts my head because of the sheer number of new models and announcements involved.

Jaguar's C-X16 is obviously the star of the show, or is it? Is it the new Land Rover Life On Cars featured not long ago? Or Volkswagen's Up? Or Honda's new Civic? Or one of no less three new fast Fords? Or Porsche's latest 911? Or a new Maserati off-roader I'd forgotten about until I started typing this paragraph? These are just the tip of an enormous automotive iceberg. There were, at the last count, more than 500 images of motoring metal to sift through.

I do, amongst all that, think I've found an unlikely star of this year's show, in the form of Citroen's Tubik. Lots of boring people have told me that a car is just a big shiny box but this Citroen literally is; angular to the point of being avantgarde, blessed with the same basic proportions as a cupboard and covered in what it appears to be tinfoil. But that's exactly what you get with an Airstream trailer, which is age-defyingly cool. So, I reckon, is the big, boxy French star.

If you've made it this far into the column with getting bored I think I can get away with telling you it is in fact a homage to the H-Van, the Citroen cargo carrier which spent decades as the staple transport of every small business from Calais to Cannes. It's this square-rigged star of its motoring past that Citroen's toying with reinventing, and even though it's still in the concept stages I'd love to see them come up with a production version, which the company reckons could carry nine in comfort. Try that with your Ford Galaxy.

So my highlight of what's a proudly German event is a shiny box created by the French. How very European of me.

Fire up the... Citroen DS3 Racing

THE chap from Citroen's press department, it turns out, was right. Step from a Citroen DS3 into this and you realise it's a completely different beast.

Not that this is necessarily a good thing. Last year I drove two different versions of the company's then new luxury hatch - the petrol and the diesel - and concluded it was a corker. Good looking, fun to drive and frugal to boot, the DS3 was one of the best drives of 2010, feeling like a true hot hatch without the added engineering weaponry. Of the all the cars I clambered into last year, this was one of my favourites.

Making something markedly different, like this range-topping DS3 Racing, runs the risk of diluting the original's appeal in the pursuit of going faster, harder and noiser than before. It is, without doubt, much lairier in the styling department, with plenty in the way of yoof-pleasing go faster stripes and multispoke alloy wheels. Then again, this is the spiritual successor to hot hatch icons like the AX GT and the Saxo VTS.

But where they were all about keeping things lightweight and the simple, the Racing's a much more luxurious affair. You'll love the leather bucket seats, for instance, which not only look the part but also keep you comfortable whether you're cruising along the motorway or - more likely - coursing down the country lanes. The quality of the materials and switchgear, apart from the “RACING” motifs, is also good news for drivers of the normal DS3, because the cabin's a refreshing and solid sort of place to be.

Not that you'll spend much time looking at it, because out on the road the £23,000 Racing's revvy 1.6 turbo engine is forever recommending you give it the beans. Plant your foot down and its whiff of torque steer will catch out the unwary driver, but learn how well it goes and handles and you quickly appreciate it for what it is; a very, very quick and capable car.

Loud, lairy and a little bit scary, the DS3 Racing might be better trimmed than some of its ancestors but it shows Citroen can still come up with a cracking hot hatch when they want to. It might not be to everyone's taste but it's seriously good fun.

So the Citroen DS3 Racing is completely different from its slower siblings, but it's also better.

Video: Life On Cars visits the SMMT Test Day

Champion motoring correspondent David Simister gives his verdict on some of 2011's most important new cars at the Millbrook Proving Ground in Bedfordshire:

Full road tests of all the cars in this video will appear in the Fire Up The... section in the next few weeks.

Maxing it at Millbrook again

IT was somewhere near Milton Keynes that my right foot finally, after 13 hours of near constant-driving, began to throb.

The easiest and quickest way to get from the Millbrook Proving Ground, where I've just spent another day speed-dating cars, to the bit of the north west I call home is to head up the M1. Unfortunately, a nasty accident meant it was shut, so my photographer and I ended up snakng through the nation's favourite New Town instead, through what must be the world's longest traffic jam. But I didn't care, because it ended a day of motoring moments I'll never forget.

In true Life On Cars tradition, there'll be full road tests of each of the 15 cars I tested appearing on here in the coming weeks but for now I can tell you that:

• I've finally found an electric car I like, after driving the remarkably unremarkable Citroen C-Zero.

• The car everyone was itching to get a go in wasn't a Bentley or a Jag, but a Vauxhall. After finding out what the VXR8 (pictured) feels like under full throttle, I now know why.

• The Audi A1 is one of the year's big surprises, but probably not for the reasons you might expect.

• Suzuki could have a hit on its hands with its first ever big saloon, the intruiging Kazashi.

• I don't understand why there aren't more Infinitis out there, after I discovered the G37 Convertible is not only a cosseted cruiser, but surprisingly good fun to drive.

• Peugeot, the people who brought you the cracking RC Z last year, are still on a roll. The 508 is a motorway machine par excellence.

• I think, after much searching, I've found the true successor to the slightly loopy Bond Bug of the Seventies.

• The Citroen DS3 Racing, which is one of my favourite cars of last year fitted with an enormous turbocharger, an absolute blast to drive. So much so that one of the other journalists crashed it.

But the real star of the day, unbelievably, was the Rover 200 I'd used to get there. Sure, it doesn't have the polish, the precision or the punch of any of the new cars I drove but it didn't complain once, munching up hundreds of motorway miles quietly and comfortably.

I'd set off from Southport at 4.30am, snaked through traffic for hours on end in Bedfordshire and covered more than 400 miles, but when I finally rolled up at 11 'o' clock last night I was unruffled, relaxed and full of praise for the Rover. On a day where I'd had all sorts of shiny new cars at my disposal, it was a comfy cruiser which impressed endlessly.

Not bad for a car that cost £300.

It's all in the name

COOL car, the Citroen DS3. A typically trendy magazine crowned it the world's coolest car last year, and I complained loudly that I wasn't cool enough to understand why. Then I drove it and discovered it was brilliant, so it got my vote as well. The Citroen DS3 is cool, even when it's being driven by someone who isn't.

Here's the rub though, it is a cool Citroen and - despite the company's drive to make the DS label a sort of brand within a brand - that's the label it's going to live with. There's nothing wrong with that; I've always thought of Citroen as a cool company, because it's behind everything from the beautiful, Maserati-engined SM, through a succession of CXs, XMs and Xantias, to the wonderful floating steering wheel on the old C4. Get quizzed by your mates down the local, however, and you can't tell them you drive a DS. You drive a Citroen.

My point is that I don't think there's ever been a brand-within-a-brand that's ever worked, because most people are badge snobs and just look at the keyfob. BMW's M cars, for instance, are legendary for being giant-slaying stealth saloons, but tell anyone other than a hardened car enthusiast and they'll only be impressed because you drive a BMW. This is the reason, I reckon, for the Honda NSX being a flop over here. For all its Ferrari-bating performance, fine handling and handsome looks, it was still a Honda.

Remember the Xedos 6 and Xedos 9? Don't worry if you can't, because Mazda couldn't master it either. Despite lots of publicity at the time, the two are now considered just two other cars in the company's back catalogue. It didn't - in this country at least - give the MX-5 a fancy badge, but people flocked to it because it was the right product for the right time. Proof that the car itself matters more than the badge it's wearing.

I can think of just one exception to the rule, which comes from all you Range Rover owners out there. It might be built, designed and sold by Land Rover, but for dinnertable bragging purposes it is always emphatically a Range Rover.

Then again, Citroen could well prove me wrong. If the DS4 and DS5 are anywhere near as good as the DS3, we've got a couple of crackers on the way.

Why I'm still not charged up by electric cars

IF you make it as far as the motors section in tomorrow's Champion, you'll probably be bored with all the stories about the Coalition Government cutting things. But what if they gave you £5,000 off your next new car?

That's right; David Cuts Cameron and his Lib Dem sidekick, Nasty Nick Clegg, actually announced yesterday that they're going to give you a whopping £5,000 off the price of your next car. Naturally, there's a slight snag to this nugget of good news - it has to run on electricity.

When the scheme starts in January, there will be just three cars on sale in British showrooms which run solely on electricity, which admittedly is three more than this time last year. The Mitsubishi iMiev, the the Smart Fortwo electric drive and the Peugeot iOn. Yet as much as I'd like to save the Earth, I'm yet to be convinced electric cars actually work properly yet.

I base this on my limited experience of driving just one electric car, the zero-emissions MINI E which BMW trialled in the South East earlier this year. I've driven and enjoyed the petrol-powered Cooper on a couple of occasions, but the MINI of the volt-powered variety was - and I choose my words carefully - one of the worst cars I've driven this year.

Sure, with all the power available at precisely no revs at all it got off the line like a greyhound, but the engine braking in particular was appalling; one on occasion, I pulled up safely at a roundabout without touching the brakes. It also had no back seats and a range of less than 150 miles and as much as BMW stressed it was an experiment and not a finished product, I really couldn't recommend it.

I've every hope that the similarly electric Nissan Leaf, which has just been voted European Car of the Year, and Citroen's C-Zero, which has just achieved the not-at-all-impressive feat of being the first car to successfully use the Eurotunnel, prove better buys. But there's still one real price you'll have to pay, and that's the price itself.

With the iMiev - a tiny city car - on sale at £24,000 and the Leaf due to cost about the same when it eventually goes on sale, I just can't see why you'd pay the price of a 3 Series or Golf GTi for a tiny and not terribly inspiring hatchback just because it runs on electricity.

I can't wait to be proven wrong, of course, but at the end of 2010 and even with the temptation of a tasty £5,000 discount, I just can't get charged up about electric cars yet.

Fire up the... Citroen DS3

THE hot hatch hits of yesteryear have been remixed and re-released by pop pickers Citroen for the first of the firm's new luxury lineup.

Check out the company's sporty DS3 hatchback and it's obvious that the styling's definitely straight out of 2010, and defiantly not retro like its MINI and Fiat 500 rivals. It's got some clever styling cues, like the way the side pillars never quite reach the roofline, but it's not a car you could ever mistake as something that's escaped from a motoring museum.

Citroen want you to think of it not as a conventional Citroen, but something with a bit more punch and prestige altogether, because it's an £11,700 entry ticket to a whole new brand being launched by the company. The pretty five-door DS4 is set to arrive in showrooms next year, but for now it's the three-door DS3 which is hoping to bring in younger and trendier buyers.

Anyone used to the old C2 or Saxo VTS is going to be in familiar territory the first time they take the new arrival to a twisty corner - it's a blast, in the same way the best hot hatches are. The too-light clutch takes a little time to get used to and you always seem to sit a little higher than you'd like, but these are minor gripes with a grippy and involving Yorkshire Terrier of a car which snaps at the ankle of much bigger motors.

But cast your eyes back to the cabin itself and you'll find you're in a very different world, with swathes of metal giving the dash a shine of quality, and plenty of space for you and your passengers. It's clear Citroen is determined not only to take on the MINI with the DS3, but the likes of Alfa's MiTo and Audi's A1 too.

Whether launching a brand-within-a-brand to entice the trendy twentysomethings is going to work is something only history will tell us; Mazda tried a similar trick twenty years ago with the Xedos lineup, and never quite pulled it off. But if the DS3's a sign of things to come, Citroen could be onto a winner. It's that rare thing; a Citroen that's cool.

If you want to charm people with retro chic, get a Fiat 500. But if you want something that's funky and fun-to-drive in a thoroughly modern way, you've got to have one of these.

As published in The Champion on September 8, 2010

Pretty DS4 promises much

CITROEN'S brand within a brand has just got bigger after an eye-catching new model was officially announced earlier this week.

After attracting rave reviews with the DS3 earlier this year the French firm has decided to expand its lineup of luxurious DS models with the DS4, which it says blends sporty coupe style with hatchback practicality and an involving driving experience.

“The DS4 brings an alluring mixture of premium design codes and a bold approach to automotive styling, with an emphasis on driving pleasure and advanced vehicle architecture,” the company said in a statement earlier this week.

“It is a model with a multitude of talents, effortlessly responding to a broad range of owner needs, while enhancing the appeal and vitality of the motoring experience.”

Its smaller DS3 sister has already attracted rave reviews following its launch earlier this year including being proclaimed as the world's coolest car by Stuff magazine.

The DS4 definitely looks the part - check out those Alfaesque hidden door handles - but it'll be sometime next year before we'll know whether the DS brand is a one hit wonder or not.

Read the Life On Cars review of the DS3 on here later this week.

A car I'm not cool enough to understand

FORGET the Fiat 500, and make sure the MINI's up for sale, because it's official. The coolest car in the world is the Citroen DS3.

Not my words, naturally, but those of Stuff magazine, who've just declared the feisty French hatchback with the funny floating roof as one of just fifteen things funky enough to make its annual hall of fame. Chosen not by fusty motoring hacks, but style gurus who know who Jay Zed is.

Tellingly, it's the only car on their list.

Curious to find out more, I asked Citroen to let me have a spin in their now officially cool DS3. They said no on the basis of me being too young; frustrating, given I'm exactly the sort of impatient twentysomething prat the company's targeting it at. They did let me try out the C3, which is basically the same car but in a frumpy, five-door dress, and from these impressions alone reckon its sportier sister is going to be a big hit with anyone looking for a successor to the old Saxo VTS. It's a fun little thing to hurl about in.

But driving's got nothing to do with it, because even though the C3's an accomplished little thing you might as well be driving around in William Hague. The people from Stuff don't give a stuff unless your car matches the exact, indefinable criteria the DS3 does, which is why I still want to drive one of those instead of being fobbed off with a mumsy shopping car. I just want to know why it's cool and another car that's technically identical isn't.

Anyone who's ever owned a Peugeot 309 GTi - which has always lurked in the shadow of the iconic 205 GTi despite being almost identical underneath - will know what I mean, and I still can't see any logical reason why you'd make a beeline for the Fiat 500 after dismissing the much roomier and equally nice-to-drive Panda. It's not even a problem isolated to cars; I've just bought a Nokia N97 because it's a brilliant little phone, but everyone else ignores it in favour of the iPhone, which is Cool Central. Cool doesn't make sense. I don't understand.

I end this week by stating the obvious - I am not cool. Not even slightly. But if someone lets me borrow a Citroen DS3 for a day or two, I'll at least be able to work out why.