Yahoo News DS3 Crossback review: refreshingly different, but is it really premium?
At the recent Geneva motor show, PSA boss Carlos Tavares announced “It will take 30 years,” referring to his long-term commitment to establishing the DS brand, which was only launched in 2015. His ambition is admirable; a week in the motor industry is a long time and so far DS has struggled to establish much of a foothold outside of its DS3 supermini in Europe.
And do PSA’s shareholders hold this invented marque, named after an epochal but now almost forgotten Citroën, so closely to their hearts? Tavares might be well advised to carefully monitor his DS blind spot.
Electrification, autonomous driving, the rise of Silicon Valley and Chinese car makers, low profitability and high investment continue to push the industry into thinking the unthinkable.
Nissan’s struggling premium badge Infiniti is being withdrawn from Europe and plans to produce Infiniti models out of its Tyne and Wear plant have been axed. Premium brands might garner more than 30 per cent of the motor industry’s profit from only 11 per cent of total sales, but creating them from scratch isn’t easy. Just ask Lexus, Toyota’s luxury badge.
DS isn’t helped by the more established Citroën within the PSA group. This year’s launch of the C5 Aircross cruelly shows up the inflated price of the arguably less desirable DS7. Last year the DS7 Crossback sold 28,000 units around the world at an average transaction price of €48,100, which means DS grossed €1.35 billion on it. No mean amount – but in January this year, Peugeot sold 17,928 of its 3008 in Europe alone. On UK roads, I see lots of Citroëns but almost never any DS models larger than the DS3.
This, the five-door DS3 Crossback, is an attempt to get more showroom traffic as the three-door DS3 hatchback glides toward its end of production this winter. DS thinks it is killing deux oiseaux avec une pierre with this new car, since in the SUV segment (itself the world’s fastest growing market sector), small sub-B crossovers and premium brands are the two fastest-growing sub-niches.
It is based on PSA’s CMP platform, which will also underpin the new Peugeot 208, Vauxhall’s next Corsa and eventually Citroen’s replacement C3. It has front MacPherson struts and a torsion-beam rear just like everything else in the sector and it has been built to house PSA’s new electric driveline, which in DS parlance is called the E-Tense, which we have driven elsewhere.
There’s just one petrol engine, a three-cylinder turbo unit with a six-speed manual gearbox in the lowliest version and an eight-speed torque converter automatic in everything else. The UK will also get the 100bhp, 1.5-litre HDi turbodiesel, but it isn’t expected to sell well.
From the outside, the DS3 is small SUV ubiquity, although festooned with details. From the egg-crate grille to the motorised door handles, the sparkly headlamps and the window-line kick, this is style as non sequitur - why, you might ask yourself. The 18-inch wheels are rather lost in the wheel arches and it isn’t that well put together, with variable panel gaps and not-quite-fitting doors on the cars we drove.
This car is built on the same production line as PSA’s other superminis; in places, it shows.
The trim options are copious and bewildering, but we drove the all the bells-and-whistles La Premiere version with the 153bhp version of the engine with an automatic transmission. In France, DS charmingly calls its trim options by stops on the Paris Metro; Opera, Rivoli and so on, although we might wait in vain for Trinité - d'Estienne d'Orves, or Gare du Nord. The top speed is 129mph, 0-62mph in 8.2sec, the worst-case WLTP Combined fuel consumption is 41.7mpg and CO2 emissions are 128g/km.
As widely predicted, small-capacity, turbocharged three-cylinder engines such as this have been caned in the new WLTP fuel consumption tests and their tax benefits will be a lot less. Driving through the Alpes Maritime, we achieved a fuel consumption just the wrong side of 30mpg.
Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend, sang Marilyn Monroe; well, girls, you’re going to love this car. Diamond themes run and run, as do high-quality fabrics, materials and glassy finishes, although quality drops off sharply below your derrière.
The design is quaint and some of it is confusing, especially the central window lift switches close by the all-too similar electronic parking brake switch. There’s space enough in the front, with decent door pockets and a small centre console, but only one USB slot.
The cabin betrays its roots when it comes to the hard points, too, with the gear lever and unsatisfactory touchscreen (which demands several touches merely to turn the heater fan down) straight from the PSA parts bin.
The front seats aren’t brilliantly comfortable but they are quite supportive, while the driving position is good in spite of the small footwells. In the back, sitting behind myself, my head brushed the roof lining and my knees were in the seat back. And, at 350 litres, the boot space is smaller than premium rivals such as the Audi Q2 - the seats fold 60/40, but the load bed isn’t flat and there’s no spare wheel.
The interioris cute and certainly different. DS calls it 'Haute Couture', but it makes the car very expensive (the La Premiere version we drove costs £33,950) and I’m not convinced it’s of particularly high quality. Our dashboard creaked and rattled when the car was driven with spirit. What’s more, my years sitting in the office close to former Telegraph fashion editor Hilary Alexander persuaded me that however weird high fashion looked it was always meticulously well made.
Extracting 153bhp from this 1.2-litre engine has required many new parts including pistons and turbocharger, but it’s a nice unit to drive with a sassy note, lots of low-down boost and a decent top end, even though these three-cylinder units don’t really like to rev.
I wish I could be as complimentary of the Aisin eight-speed automatic gearbox, which is jerky, makes weirdly unrequired gearchanges and feels as rough as a robotised manual gearbox when in Sport mode. The Normal setting is marginally better, but despite steering wheel gearchange paddles you never feel quite in charge of the drivetrain.
The steering is really well worked, with great weighting and a progressive, intuitive action which allows you to place the car with accuracy and verve. The chassis, too, has restricted body roll and decent traction, with a sort of fizzing feedback which inspires confidence to the driver and encourages you to go faster. I’m not altogether convinced this is what this car will do in a normal owner’s day, however.
And where it counts, in the wicked city, the ride is noisy and harsh, particularly over sleeping policemen and potholes. Rivals such as VW’s new T-Cross can do both town and country with spectacular aplomb and we know PSA can do better than this because it does so with both its Peugeot and Citroën brands.
Premium is as premium does, of course. Renault and Mercedes-Benz share engines, and even Audi and Bentley use VW parts, but there’s a weird alchemy to this business which I’m not entirely sure that DS has grasped.
Diamonds might be forever, but if DS wants its coruscating diamond trim to be recognised or even extant in 30 years I think it needs to do a bit better than this.
THE FACTS
DS3 Crossback 1.2 PureTech
TESTED 1,199cc, three-cylinder turbo petrol, eight-speed semi-automatic gearbox, front-wheel drive
PRICE/ON SALE range from £21,550 to £33,950 (as tested in La Premiere launch version £33,950)/now
POWER/TORQUE 153bhp @ 5,500rpm, 177lb ft @ 1,750rpm
TOP SPEED 129mph
ACCELERATION 0-62mph in 8.2sec
FUEL ECONOMY WLTP Combined low 45.7mpg, high 41.7mpg. 29mpg on test
CO2 EMISSIONS 128g/km
VED £170 first year, then £145
VERDICT It’s hard to fault the enthusiasm of the DS brand to make something of itself, but the DS3 Crossback is too similar to its non-premium PSA-produced sisters and not quite good enough in the things you touch and see to be a serious premium contender. It handles well and is fun to drive, but the automatic gearbox isn’t great, the engine is relatively thirsty and it rides like a sack trolley.
TELEGRAPH RATING Three stars out of five
THE RIVALS
Peugeot 2008, from £17,424
One for the first supermini crossover SUVs and now getting quite long in the tooth. Only the designer's mother could love it, but this little pug is good to drive, with a well-designed cabin and has an economical range of engines starting with the same 1.2-litre three-cylinder.
Renault Captur, from £15,300
Derived from Renault's Frendzy concept of 2011, the Captur is built down to a price and into a market. Now in its Mk2 form, it has perky looks, a decent range of engines and good dynamics. Shame is, however, it still rides like a trolley jack.
Suzuki Jimny, from £12,999
It starts and ends here if you want to go somewhere they haven't built a road in a titchy car. The Jimny is cramped, noisy, it bounces along the road and its handling is limited and crash performance questionable, but its 1.3-litre petrol engine is game and it looks way beyond cute.
Audi Q2, from £22,160
Nicely packaged rework on VW's MQB chassis and drivelines, with decent handling although the ride is severe. The problem is for the Q2 is that, as with the DS3 and its siblings, other cars also from within the VW Group rivals start to look much better value.
Mini Countryman, from £23,385
Too big, and about as far from the agile two-box Issigonis design as can be, but folk seem to like them. There's plenty of space and the handling is good, with decent diesel engines and a useful hybrid.
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