18 Oct 07
We saw the Citroen C5 Airscape at the Frankfurt show and a production version would no doubt make a pleasant convertible. It would be Citroen's first full-size drop-top since the stylish days of the DS decapotable, but that's hardly the point.
The Airscape is the lower half, door-count notwithstanding, of the just-revealed new C5 saloon. And note that this time it really is a saloon and not a disguised hatchback - although there is, naturally, also an estate version. The old C5 was Citroen's worst-looking car in years, a frumpy, slab-sided aberration only partly salvaged by a mid-life nose-and-tail job. That was one of the reasons it sold poorly, despite vast discounts destined to annihilate already precarious residual values.
Citroen hopes fervently that this is all behind it. The new C5, as you can see, is a massively better-looking car, something you can stand back and admire in your driveway. It's no coincidence that aft of the very obviously new-age-Citroen nose, the C5 looks quite Germanic; seen tail-on, it could be an Audi or a BMW if you ignore the chevron badge.
This is a double-edged sword. Citroen wants to attract buyers who almost certainly will not have considered a C5 before and, in order to do so, has given the C5 the usual 'premium' feel, just as Ford and Renault have tried to do with the Mondeo and Laguna. (We'll overlook that in all three cases, similar claims were made of the previous models.) But in making the C5 acceptable to such buyers, there's a danger that some Citroen design character might be lost. And unusual, alternative-solution design has long been a Citroen thing, with varying degrees of success. Today's C4 and C6, plus some excellent concept cars, show the spark is still there.
