Hi guys,
For my internship I have been on the road and track the entire week in this car. We drove about 3000km since last week. It was powered by a 1.6 litre engine found in many Citroens and Peugeot's. A quick (and probably poorly written ) first report.
Finally a good looking vehicle from French soil. It looks absolutely great from the outside. The rounded forms of the previous model are recognisable. However it is far less conservative with more attention to detail
When you open the door the first thing you see is a very shiny dashboard. It is made of plastic that even the cheapest korean car is jealous at. When you look further you see a highly recognisable audio system integrated. It is placed in the center of the dashboard however the controls are placed very low. Very annoying to operate whilst driving.
Having a seat first thing you notice is the difficulty to get in. It aint so easy and there is a big chance of a headache. Also your feet bump into the big storage boxes in the door easily. In the back it is even more cramped. At 1m 81 cm I bump my head into the roof. At normal driving position for me I also have knees against the front seat. The seats are typical french. Soft and not giving support in corners at all.
The special front window is nice. It gives a lighter impression of the cars' interior. It has a sliding roof piece that you can slide open for the sun screens. However quality is very poor. When driving on not perfect tarmac the screens start moving very swiftly. Also it leaves huge gaps which cause a lot of sun still coming into your eyes. I am convinced the weak mechanism will break and start to rattle over time. It ruins the plus points i would otherwise give it, because of the windscreen.
So we fire it up. There is no sound. A quick look at the tacho confirms it's running. Very silent engine at idle. This silence disappears though when driving 120 + as we did most of the time on our test drive to France. Shifting is allright. The 1.6 is fitted with a 6-speed box. The quality is horrible though. At a mileage of +/- 4000km it allready makes all kind of noises. I wonder if consumers will get problems with it. Usually they don't drive it in such extreme conditions as we do offcourse.
Steering is very light. Maybe even too light. The car rolls a lot, in part caused by the geometry and softness of the suspension. This is very soft and not balanced. The rear is allright, but the front is poorly dampened. The outward damping should be much more. You almost get sea sick on a bumpy road in Belgium.. If you like soft french driving and the 'Citroen' feel you will love it.
Understeer occurs very fast in this car. Especially in the rather poor result of the elk test. We more or less went straight ahead and over the cones with the left wheels. Fast corner was more fun. The ESP reacted too slowly resulting in understeer going into oversteer going into ESP-correction. Unexpected!
Conclusion
Nice car. If design and comfort are what you are looking for you got the right car. If build quality, handling in any way, fuel economy (test usage 1l:13km !!) and price are important, get something else.