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-   -   Citroen C5 Aircross Review (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/official-new-car-reviews/233292-citroen-c5-aircross-review-10.html)

Yes, I drove past their showroom as well, and they seem to be all set up for customers.

Guess the expected launch date is 1 March.

WIP
Couldn't visit due to paucity of time (was going to Jeep's that day :P )
Location: Naraina Vihar, New Delhi

They have just started prebookings on their website for 50,000 rupees. They are also offering a 5 year/50000 km complimentary maintenance package for bookings till 6th April.

Let's see how the price comes out to be.

Citroen C5 Aircross bookings open TVC

https://youtu.be/b_79n67ldJE

Oh, that's a bad miss by Citroen. Why don't manufacturers add these reasonably cheap gadgets to make life easier? Could have been a good differentiator

You are right. In our apartment, there is Renault Kwid parked opposite my balcony and whenever it rains, water gets collected at the scooped-up area. It is so deep that the rainwater is stagnated for many days unless you wipe it off. When I told the owner, he was actually shocked to know about the water being collected and said that he never noticed the scooped design.



When Renault launched Kiger, this is the first thing I checked, and guess what?? This time bonnet has the scooped-up design. Although this is not prominent like Kwid's scooped-up roof, it could still collect water/debris.





Now seeing this in Citroen, it looks like French designers are obsessed with scooped-up design?:confused:

I started observing new car bonnets after your post and found that even Seltos has a similar bonnet scoop design. No one has complained about this for Seltos though, so this may be a non-issue for Aircross as well!

Unlike the roof, the bonnet is slanting forward and as such, water can't accumulate in those scoops.

You're are right about the Seltos bonnet design but I never observe any issue. It shouldn't be a concern on C5.

Bonjour - nice review as usual.

Given the fact that I'm still seeking a worthy successor to my Renault glider, here's my two bits' worth on the Aircross.

I believe Citroen/PSA may be launching the wrong car initially. They should have gone with something between the C3 and C5 for the larger market. As numerous BHPians have indicated, if this fails they'll have a hard time pushing anything else. Also see the Orangutan's positive review of the C3 on The Grand Tour...

Secondly as someone pointed out the C5 does look like the Duster from some angles and that's not surprising given this is already a 4+ year-old car. Why launch something in the 25 to 30 L (?), ex-showroom space when even VW are now waking up to the potential power of the 15L ish UV (read Taigun)? Man Citroen could have killed it - instead hope they don't commit harakiri or cara-hiri :eek:

It still depends on the pricing. I could be proved wrong if they price it around 18 to 20 L...

Cheers!

Took a test drive of C5 today.
Bangalore has two branches under PPS which also has Ford and VW dealerships.
There is an option to buy the car directly from Citroen bypassing the dealer network similar to Tesla. That's a first in India.

All the cars on display and in the yard were Feel variant.
Coming to the drive, the car is well built, silent and has sufficient power to keep one happy. Gear changes are smooth and visibility is brilliant. The blind spot monitoring and the front parking sensors make it a very car to drive in crowded roads.
Comfort is where this car shines. Front seats are wide and supportive with right amount of cushioning. The rear seats are good, but could do with a bit more thigh support. I also sat in the rear seat while another prospective customer took the test drive. Body roll is controlled and the rear seat comfort is excellent when compared to the competition.

Pre-booking amount is 50000/-. As a promotional offer, 5year/50000Kms maintenance package is offered for free for customers who pre-book before 6th April which is when the pricing will be announced.

According to the sales executive, the onroad pricing for Shine variant would be between 35-38L. If this is true, Citroen will be making a big blunder. At this price, the true blue SUV twins, Fortuner and Endeavour are just a few lakhs away. I would be happy to get a Compass over C5.
Citroen really needs to price it sensibly for a new entrant to make an impact else it will be an uphill task to get a foothold in the Indian market

Not a chance! I was at the showroom today and as per the sales rep, the Feel will be ~30L ex showroom and the Shine will be ~ 32L ex showroom. This is in line with the information that Speedmiester received below in Bangalore as well.

To be honest, the car is atleast one segment above the Harriers and Seltos of the world on interiors and technicals alone. It felt even a segment above the Compass to me. The estimated price reflects the product pretty well. Whether it sells or doesn't is a another thing altogether. The Pune dealer has received 51 bookings as of this evening. I think this will sell even at the estimated price.

So a guy from the new Citroen showroom called me last week to tell me about their new launch. They also own the Jeep showroom so they must have got my number from there as I was looking for a compass. The SA very politely told me that the Aircross will be placed above the Compass. The Compass top model is 32L in Kolkata so you can very well imagine which way this Citroen is heading.

I cannot comment on the car, because I have not experienced it myself, but I was expecting a lot from Citroen and as someone said earlier in this thread, I am let down too. Possibly due to the hype that the car generated. (Mods had the Tata Safari and C5 at the same time, but it took longer for the C5 review to come out than the Tata Safari)

Thanks for sharing your update, speedmiester. :thumbs up — What’s the benefit of buying a Citroen C5 from the brand vs buying it from the dealer?

I can’t help but comment on this —

Usually, it is the top variant that is displayed and marketed. How come there was not a single Shine variant anywhere in the dealership?

And I would like to point out, even Team-BHP as well as other media houses got the Feel Variant for review - not the shine. Why?

This makes me wonder if the shine variant is really rolling off the assembly line? Or does Citroen know that it won’t sell if they price it exorbitantly high? Even their showrooms are such that Citroen can pack up and leave overnight! :deadhorse

P.S. Where is the launch heading to? Someone in the earlier posts said 1st March. But no news so far, right?

P.P.S. (— Lol, that’s the Citroen Dealer) +Aditya +GTO the title of this thread is “Citroen C5 Aircross Review”, while all earlier official reviews had a standard title — Car Name “:” “Official Review”.

Similarly, even Mercedes A-Limo, Altroz Turbo Petrol and Tata Safari review threads don’t have the earlier title format. Pardon me for my OCD, but they look out-of-place in the Official Reviews section.

Any reason why you decided to remove the “Official” word? IMHO, it looks and sounds cooler than just “Review”

I feel Citroen is making a blunder by not launching the C5 Aircross sooner! This is the time to be going crazy with commercials about the car eg: the way Kia (or even MG) entered India with the constant ads and commercials. When the reviews were out, Citroen gave ads the next day but don’t find them anywhere now. By now the prospective customers would have booked their Compass/Fortuners/Endeavours!

IMHO the approach by Citroen has been completely wrong, first thing they should have focused on is building dealerships and service centres and then showcasing the car to the media and eventually the customers. The car maybe however good it is but a new manufacturer’s starting steps in a country will determine their future.

I agree with you, 100%. Infact I think there is something seriously wrong with Citroen.

Reasons:

◘ Absence of top-end variant: This, IMHO is the biggest reason why I am suspicious of Citroen — I have not seen a single Citroen C5 Aircross ‘Shine’ variant (top variant) anywhere on the web. I find it odd that the Feel variant was given to media houses, instead of the Shine with more features. A BHPian above says that his Citroen dealer’s yard has all Feel variants. Is the top end variant even rolling off the assembly line?

◘ Huge Delays: Our mods had the Safari and the C5 at the same time. Yet the Citroen embargo ended weeks after the Safari one. Safari started deliveries and even introduced a special edition! And here we don’t even know the prices of Citroen cars.

◘ Absence of advertisements: There is just one TVC of the Citroen C5 Aircross, which is also played ONLY on our Tata Sky’s 100 channel. While the Safari ads are seen every day. The last time Citroen was in the news was on 21st January, when they opened the first La Maison Citroen. Take a look at how many times MG is in Team-BHP news. When Kia and MG launched they had their ‘Badass’ and ‘Human Thing’ campaigns in full swing and these were extremely successful. I remember that MG hired Indian influencers and took them around Egypt in MG cars.

◘ Sales through the brand: Now this is just my own opinion — (I don’t know anything much about this & thus had asked for more detail about this in a previous post, but nobody replied) — won’t cars being sold directly through the brand INSTEAD OF A DEALER lower the morale of dealers?