voyeurism

thrilled to be part of an EV tech talk forum :-)

i am very grateful to have been invited by Performance Motors, Singapore, to be part of an EV tech talk forum.

do join us for an afternoon of sharing and learning, on the 16th of December :-)

Münchner Freiheit: the enigmatic BMW iX3

It has been a month since i took ownership of a BMW iX3.

This is my first BMW, and I come to the marque after a long relationship with Citroën. This latter point is not insignificant because it speaks to what I look for in a car, and – if one were to lapse in to stereotype – the two marques have traditionally appealed to quite different clienteles.

On the face of it, my particular unit of the iX3 falls squarely in to stereotype, with its Sophisto Grey Brilliant Effect paintwork, its M Shadowline trim (including the consequent absence of chrome detailing), and its 20-inch alloy wheels. The latter are noteworthy because they are shaped for low wind resistance but are of a ride-destroying diameter.

Yet they are not.

The iX3 continues to surprise and delight me, most notably in the quality of its ride comfort. With adaptive dampers under the moniker of Adaptive M Suspension, the iX3 has a pillow-soft ride and an imperious waft. There is a hushed absence of noise, vibration and harshness, aided no doubt by its double-glazing.

The supremely serene ride quality of the iX3 is at odds with the general thrustiness of its Calvin Luk-penned proportions, and I still scratch my head at how it has been achieved without being suspended through a pneumatic medium.

Beyond the enigma of its ride quality, there are many other aspects of the car which delight.

I am not generally a fan of facelifts, but I do think the tail lamps have been particularly well interpreted. Visibility from the cabin is very good, in large part due to the proportions of the glasshouse and the properly large side mirrors. These seem mundane things to discuss, but they do contribute to the overall feeling of securité de conduite.

One cannot talk about the sense of driving security the iX3 imparts, without an extensive discussion of the degree of intelligent assistance the car affords. This manifests itself not only in the headline act of Level 2+ autonomy (through the Driving Assistant Professional suite) but also through more subtle means. Two examples to do with navigation are first the way the routings on the (properly-sized) Head Up Display dynamically orientate their position to give the driver a more holistic understanding, say, during roundabouts, and second the way the oral delivery of the estimated drive time is given not immediately upon setting off (which is a time of high cognitive load on the driver) but shortly afterwards, once the car is en route and the driver has more bandwidth to deal with the provision of secondary information.

As for autonomous driving once underway, the AI is truly well calibrated. I have not encountered false positives, unlike during my test drive of the Mercedes EQC. Autonomous driving on the iX3 can cope with vehicular traffic cutting in to one’s lane, and with motorbikes weaving in and out.

As a geographer, I love that the car is not only locationally aware, but locationally aware at different scales. At the regional scale, the car is aware of its location through GPS. Such awareness is tapped by battery management and adaptive recuperation with respect to topography and the road network. The excellence of the adaptive recuperation has helped me match the official WLTP energy consumption figures. Second, at the hyperlocal scale, the car is aware of its location with respect to other vehicular traffic, using its combination of cameras and radar. Its location awareness at this scale of operation allows the iX3 to achieve its afore-mentioned degree of autonomy, including lane-changing without driver intervention.

I use autonomous driving on the iX3 on a daily basis, and it just matches the wafty demeanour of the automobile so well.

The iX3 appeals on so many levels. The petrolhead in me loves its 43 : 57 rear-biased weight distribution and the fact that it is rear-engined, rear-wheel-driven. The physicist in me loves that its centre of gravity is lower than other X3s due to its full-electric architecture. The data scientist in me loves the excellence of calibration of its AI. The geographer in me loves that its current-excited motor contains no rare earth elements.

But most of all the philosopher in me is enthralled by the enigma the BMW iX3 represents. On the face of it, this is the most powerful, most torquey, most accelerative automobile I have owned. Yet it is also the most cosseting to drive. The sheer serenity of its passage over the vilest of road perturbations is astounding. This is an automobile which weighs 2.3 tonnes yet wafts like a cloud. There truly is some magic in this magic carpet.

[with deep gratitude to Patsy Chua, Eddie Ho, and the team at Performance Motors Ltd. thank you for going above and beyond.]

Nolite super foenum ambulare: ruminations on the new Land Rover Defender

Nolite super foenum ambulare, read the sign.

It caused me to do a double-take, more than thirty years’ ago, at a certain Cambridge college.

My rudimentary Latin, with the added situational context of the sign itself, helped me to deduce its intent. Judging by the pristine state of the lawn, I was not the only person to be able to do so.

I have no idea whether that sign still exists, and perhaps it was a product not only of its time, but – more significantly – of its unique cultural context.

I was reminded of the sign when I drove the new Land Rover Defender today.

To call it ‘new’ is quite likely the understatement of the decade. For male Singaporeans of a certain vintage, the Land Rover Defender connotes mud, mosquitoes, blood, sweat, and tears, and more mosquitoes. But it was also the Defender which I loved and respected for its absolute authority over terrain, for which you learned to trust it to get you back to camp and back to the security of overcooked mess hall food. 

When a Defender came rolling over the horizon, you knew you would be able to hit the showers soon.

I fell so hard for the Defender that I told my Commanding Officer I wanted to become an Army Driver. Alas, that was not to be, because the powers that be deemed me over-qualified (whatever that meant).

It was therefore with great excitement and anticipation that I took the wheel of the new Defender today. I had, after all, been waiting thirty-five years for the opportunity.

Like the sign on that Cambridge lawn, the new Defender is a product of the present time and culture. New Defender has to trace the narratives from its storied past of deserts, rainforests and montane tundra, to the post-modern world of a COVID-19 future.

Are there still rivers to ford and horizons to chart? Maybe now, more so than ever. And if any vehicle be up to the challenge, surely Defender – trusted by so many generations of geographers, explorers, soldiers, doctors, and nurses – can?

Nolite super foenum ambulare. 

If you think about it, there’s something a bit off with the idiomatic expression. A quick google suggests the alternative Nolite in herbam ambulare. 

The differences are just enough to precipitate a degree of dissonance.

As Defender and I were tootling along, I could not help but find the whole experience a little anti-climactic. It was a cocoon of auditory isolation, with visual cues of exposed Allen screws combining (or were they clashing?) with the tactile luxury of suede (or possibly alcantara). The large ‘DEFENDER’ in bold letters on the front passenger’s fascia is very much needed, lest one get distracted by Knightsbridge on the way to Kilimanjaro.

Yes, new Defender can press on with alacrity when one pivots one’s right foot. 

But you don’t really want to know that, do you?

Suffice instead the knowledge that come what may – with the possible exception of an Extinction Level Event – Defender will see you home to the security of a warm bed and shower.

Just like it did thirty-five years’ ago.

Nolite super foenum ambulare?

Why walk when one can waft?

meeting my heroes - Linda Jackson

it's amazing to be able to meet one's life heroes.

Linda Jackson is someone i truly admire, and she is a warm and humble person face-to-face.

my gratitude to the management of Cycle & Carriage France.

What would Jean-Paul do? On Gaultier, Sartre and the DS 7 Crossback

I have one enduring memory of my Volvo XC90.

I was exploring the back roads of an industrial estate in the periphery of the airport, in seach of the perfect spotting spot to capture the inaugural arrival of the (then new) Airbus A380 on its round-the-world demonstration tour.

Because I was concentrating more on how the roads and lines of sight aligned with the approach path to the runway, i was not really paying much attention to the road surface itself.

Before I knew it, I detected in my peripheral vision a looming very large road hump - either unpainted, or worn bare from years of having heavy trucks crash over it - it was a road hump unlike others, designed to impede the trajectories of hurtling lorries through that industrial estate.

I braked - hard.

The XC90, being the Volvo it was, took the hump with the equanimity that might be expected of a vehicle of its mass.

We proceeded - XC90 and i - in search of the perfect spotting spot.

Like the Swedes, the French do not have a strong tradition of automobiles with greater ground clearance and increased ride heights.

The grandes berlines de luxe of the past have - if anything - distinguished themselves with their svelte proportions and swoopy curves.

The low-slung Citroën ID / DS, CX, and C6 are the antithesis of the contemporary phenomenon that is the crossover SUV.

And what are pretensions to luxury, without heritage?

A student of French automotive history would be familiar with the application of Schumpeter's schöpferisches Zerstörung to Citroën.

Citroën has undergone the process of creative destruction several times during its hundred-year history, not least from the heady Maserati days of the seventies, to the ultra-rational Peugeot era.

Most recently, creative destruction has been witnessed in the resolution - reductio ad absurdum - of Citroën's traditional dualism between its identities as proletarian transport and presidential limousine, with the creation of DS Automobiles as a standalone marque.

As the first bespoke model in the DS portfolio for Europe, the 7 Crossback faces an existentialist conundrum worthy of Descartes - what is its raison d'etre, and from whence has it come?

Can the 7 Crossback really justify itself purely as a means of addressing current market trends?

These questions weighed heavily on my mind as i contemplated the 7 Crossback.

Try as i might, i could not make sense of the existence of the 7 Crossback beyond a mere cynical marketing ploy - it exists because of the prevailing winds of the market, nothing more.

As far as French models with greater ground clearance go, the gulf between cars such as the Matra Rancho and the Méhari, and the 7 Crossback is as deep and wide as they come.

How could the 7 Crossback be considered truly French?

And then - through the good graces of the local dealership - i was presented with the opportunity to take one for an extended drive.

Many column inches have already been written elsewhere on the BRM analogue timepiece in the automobile, and other architectural elements.

In and of themselves, they do not - they cannot - a voiture de luxe make.

But get behind the wheel of a 7 Crossback, and within the first few hundred metres of motion, something rather remarkable happens.

What seemed once as arbitrary elements of the interior architecture cohere to create an intimate cabin, not unlike what one might expect to find in a bistro in the Latin Quarter filled with the smoke of a dozen gitanes being enjoyed at once, by men with nothing better to do than to ponder that most classically Cartesian of constructs - the nature of existence.

The madness of the world outside ceases to matter. One is at liberty within to contemplate anew whether that pipe is indeed a pipe - or, if one has the good fortune to share the cabin with that special person, to enjoy the companionship of the Other as only the French know how.

So, i could discuss the jewellery of the 7 Crossback, but i won't.

One does not consider prospective ownership of such an automobile on the basis of those matters alone.

Instead, i will close this essay with a contemplation of the interpretation of phenomenology and existentialism as put forward by that most French of French philosophers - Jean-Paul Sartre.

Would Sartre have approved of the 7 Crossback?

I believe he would have reviled it, and decried it, as a hedonistic abomination of the bourgeoisie.

But Sartre would not have had the opportunity to experience for himself the algorithmic intelligence of the suspension system which goes by the clever name of DS Active Scan.

Through DS Active Scan, the 7 Crossback attempts something that might have fascinated Sartre, namely the blurring of the distinction between etre-pour-soi (being for itself) and etre-en-soi (being in itself). Millisecond after millisecond, the 7 Crossback with Active Scan continually tries to make sense of the phenomena around itself, and interpret the latter in ways which manifest as néant (nothingness).

What is the nature of consciousness? When is a road hump not a road hump? When it is anticipated by the suspension of an automobile.

There will come a time, perhaps, when all vehicles will apply technology in this way.

But for now, the 7 Crossback stands unique in prioritising the proposition of making nothing out of something. It is the quintessentially French approach to well-being.

The automobile which successfully reconciles Gaultier with Sartre? That’d be the DS 7 Crossback.

---------------

*much gratitude to the management and staff of Cycle and Carriage France for the loan of the DS 7 Crossback

the collision of cubism and bien-etre

i have just bought a Citroën C4 Picasso.

i could elaborate on the specifics of the drivetrain and the trim level, but i’m not going to; this blog entry is not about such mundane issues.

the model of Picasso i have bought can be considered a third-generation, if one includes the Xsara Picasso of 1999. Going back a little further, the first modern monospace Citroëns were the Evasion / Synergie of 1994. Beyond that, there is not really a strong tradition evident in the marque’s portfolio of the monospace bodystyle.

not so with Renault, of course, whom many credit as having invented the modern market segment with the groundbreaking Espace of 1984. Renault - more than any other French (or German) manufacturer - realised early and realised with earnestness the deep potentialities of the monospace as an automotive concept. One of their advertisements from that era had the tagline “… because space is the ultimate luxury”.

space being the ultimate luxury should be a concept which any resident of an East Asian metropolis should intuitively be able to grasp. Renault has stuck to its guns, ploughing its own field even to this day. While flagship Citroëns and DSs have been all long, low, and swoopy, Automobiles Renault have given us explorations in space such as the Vel Satis, Avantime, and - of course - the Espace. Together, these three cars exemplify the French concept of bien-etre, which might be loosely translated as ‘well-being’, but more accurately as ’the art of living well’.

Bien-être is quintessentially French, and is a concept which would be untranslate-able in German. The thinking behind bien-etre is the diametric opposite of the thinking behind naming something SportsVan. The gulf is much more than one of nomenclature, but one of one’s understanding of life itself. In the history of German automotive design, there has only been one instance of the Germans coming close to an understanding of bien-etre, and that is the BMW 5-series Gran Turismo. While the 5-series Gran Turismo remains in production (there is - in fact - a new model on the horizon), the same cannot be said - alas - of either the Vel Satis or the Avantime; and the Espace is no longer available in right-hand drive, more’s the pity.

which brings us back to the Citroën C4 Picasso.

back in the day, Renault actually brought three units of the Vel Satis to Singapore, and i came very close to buying one. It hit me, the other day, that i should have no regrets, because of the architectural similarities between the Vel Satis and the C4 Picasso. Both offer commodious cabins, and both push the boat out in terms of tactile quality and attention to cabin texturing. Je ne regrette rien, as Mme Piaf would say.

so the C4 Picasso is unlike any other Citroën i have owned, because its conceptual heritage cannot be traced earlier than the mid-1990s. yet it is by no means an enfant terrible because its architecture remains quintessentially French in conception.

no other culture could have birthed it.

yet in 2016, the market is crowded with five-seat monospaces. the majority of them miss the point, for simply putting five-seats in a bodyshell that’s been enlarged in a Xerox doth not bien-etre promote.

and - just like the inspiratorial namesake - there can be only one Picasso. only one monospace connects with cubism and dallies with deconstructionism so wilfully. while others have whittled their forms in the relentless pursuit of rationalism, the C4 Picasso surprises and delights - like all true Citroëns - over, and over, and over again, continually proffering points in both interior and exterior architecture for engaging owner, occupants, and car-as-a-character in conversation. George Herbert would have approved, for living well is indeed the best revenge.

learning physics with the Citroën C4 Cactus PureTech 82 ETG

the Citroën C4 Cactus is a car which takes you back to school.

i mean this both literally, as well as metaphorically.

literally, because i have visited many schools with it, and i love to observe the responses of children - aged six to sixty - as the Cactus drives by: fingers point, heads turn, eyes light up, and hands wave.

metaphorically, because there are a myriad of ways that the Cactus brings home those abstract diktats from your physics classes from all those years ago.

remember that equation relating force to mass and acceleration? it will come back vividly once you realise the alacrity of the Cactus’s in-gear acceleration, despite it having only a naturally aspirated three-cylinder powerplant. it’s all down to a set of five well-chosen ratios in that semi-automatic gearbox, and a sprightly kerb weight of 975 kg.

like the best three-cylinder engines, the variably valve-timed DOHC and direct injected PureTech 82 loves to rev. precisely how high it’s revving, one can’t really tell, as the car has no tachometer; but that can all be part of the fun, as the engine and drivetrain feel unburstable. and while you’re revving that plucky engine to high heaven, another lesson from physics classes comes to mind - this time, the one about harmonics and resonance. unmediated by a turbocharger, the soundtrack of the PureTech 82 up and down the rev range evokes memories of classic air-cooled 911s.

but with no turbocharger and only three cylinders, how can the Cactus hope to keep up in the daily commute? cue the law of conservation of momentum. like the best Citroëns, the C4 Cactus rewards considered inputs and forward planning. because of its relatively high power-to-weight ratio, the Cactus gains momentum easily, and you soon learn to do what you can to maintain it. if you are diligent, the driving experience becomes more rewarding and you’ll find yourself a better - smoother - driver.

from the conservation of momentum, to moments and vectors. although the C4 Cactus is available with a variety of engines, to my mind, the PureTech 82 hits the sweet spot. being a petrol, it is lighter than an equivalent diesel - plus, don’t forget, there is no encumbrance of a turbocharger.

this means that C4 Cactus PureTech 82 has the best front : rear weight distribution of any Cactus. more significantly, its weight distribution over the front and rear axles is as close to darn near equal than practically any other modern Citroën - range-topping flagship DS 5 included.

again, like the best Citroëns, the C4 Cactus can be introduced to a corner with the most delicate of inputs on the steering wheel, and it will doggedly track a steady line of your choosing - often without you having to even brush the brake pedal - at some really rather uncanny velocities.

much ink has already been spilt by motoring hacks across Europe on the other merits of the Cactus - from its seats, to its packaging, and suchlike. Autocar has taken one to a Spanish desert, and TopGear has trekked a glacier in Iceland. The Cactus is not only built to take a great deal of punishment, but it communicates this almost masochistic streak quite clearly to the driver. The car really does feel unburstable, and the clearly paradoxical way in which it cocoons its occupants in a cushy soundscape of three-cylinder thruminess calls to mind true Citroëns such as the 2CV and GS.

and thus we come to the signature feature of the Cactus - the Airbumps.

if there ever were a car designed to help us understand Newton’s Third Law of Motion, the Citroën C4 Cactus is it.

because it is as philosophical as it is unassuming, i count the C4 Cactus up there with the greatest Citroëns. and that’s why i’m buying one.

:-)

a dark and stormy night: the first month with my Citroën DS5

It was a dark and stormy night.

It was just a few minutes past six in the morning, and I was driving my parents to church. It’s a trip I make every week, and I have a good idea what to expect on the roads at that time on a Sunday. I know where the less well lit stretches are, and where the revelers from the night before wait by the roadside to hail the cabs home. I also know that to stay within the ‘green wave’ of traffic lights along the route, one has to maintain a steady average within the speed limit.

This time, though, the roads were slick with rain – which was still coming down in sheets. Occasional flashes of lightning arc-ed the sky. And – to my great surprise – mum was silent. She wasn’t prompting me to slow down, to keep to the left, to watch out for this bike or that bus. 

A year ago, i wrote on how the Citroën DS5 is a rolling Rorschach test; indeed as recently as within the past twelve hours, my friends have described the car variously as “a tank” and “sporty”. To the extent that both descriptions are valid, the DS5 is an authentic translation of the C-SportLounge concept from 2005. As might be deduced from its name, C-SportLounge sought to redefine the traditional coupé through a distinctively Citroën-esque lens.

No car will ever tear up the rule book the way the original DS was able to, back in 1955. Sociologically and politically, the world was a different place then. The DS was the enfant terrible of its time, and it was totally unapologetic in its role as cultural provocateur. In the same way, almost everything about the DS5 forces you to take a stand, and – just as one would when wrestling with the best of Sartre or Barthes – you’re very likely to find that stand riven by internal tension and contradiction.

How else would one attempt to reconcile those eighteen-inch wheels with the anaesthesia of the electric power-steering, or the apparently claustrophobic toit cockpit with the reality of top-hat max headroom? How else would one attempt to find congruence in the aluminium inserts – lifted straight from the golden age of jet flight in the 1950s – and the disco inferno tachometer? And let’s not even get started on the art deco interior, nor the three separate speedometers. In these architectural conundrums alone, the DS5 stands shoulder to shoulder with that other maddeningly intriguing large Citroën, the CX.

But is she (or, should that be ‘he’) a DS? In a post-modernist world, it seems entirely appropriate that even the gender of the DS5 should be ambiguous – more than one friend has remarked on how “masculine” the car is. The original DS was more than an engineering and architectural masterpiece – it was a cultural wonder. It embodied fluidity, and it cossetted even when standing still (partially because it was never technically standing still).

And thus we come back to that dark and stormy night.

Mum wasn’t the least bit perturbed by the storm because it wasn’t even registering on her radar. She was in an automobile – a Citroën DS5 – which was doing a supreme job of isolating her from the elements, while speeding her onwards to her destination, in the most elegant manner architecturally possible. She was – in all senses of the word – in a DS.

le roi est mort, vive le roi

'Revolution' is an interesting word.

at once associated with folk heroes from Trotsky to Che, while simultaneously over-used by ad agencies desperate to add fizz to public image, revolutions have variously been understood as irrestible forces for cultural change, and the polar opposite of cautious, deliberate, evolution.

such a diversity of applications of the word seems to befit the concept itself, for - you see - 'revolution' can be argued to also be a distinctly French invention.

deep within the French cultural psyche is the need to invoke progress through (often) violent perturbations of the status quo. pre-dating its Russian counterpart by at least a hundred years, the French Revolution birthed radical social and political upheaval across Europe (and beyond). from Robespierre to Napoleon, from the rise of feminism to the influence on Mao, no one knows better how to structure for radical change better than the French, once they put their mind to it.

… and so we come to the Citroën DS5, a car the tagline of which in Europe is changez d'époque.

it's difficult to imagine another automobile so saddled with the burden of socio-cultural expectation as the DS5.

here is a car which bears a name that has had such a bearing on modern French culture that movies have been made of it, philosophers have pundited over it, and presidents have refused to be ferried in anything but it.

and yet the DS5 bears little or no relation - at least at first, and second, and possibly third examination - to its revered original (while coming closest in the modern Ligne DS to its proportions).

could a greater sacrilege be conceived?

these thoughts were on my mind as i drove a DS5 today, for the second time in as many weeks. my first experience behind the wheel was - alas - somewhat marred by the foggy mask of the surreal, much like meeting one's hero (in my case, it would be Thierry Neuville) for the first time.

so today i determined to approach the experience more deliberately, and to treat the car as a car (albeit an automobile which i am certainly going to own one day).

how does the steering weight up? how does it track on expressways? how does the balance influence handling on the twisty bits? how is the gearbox matched with the engine?

imperceptibly. steadfastly. and with a very high degree of linearity and composure.

you see, when one is in a DS5, one rightly expects to take these as given. what i was continually aware of - instead - was the strange paradox of riding high, riding wide, and - for want of a better phrase - riding 'shallow'.

one does notice the mildly elevated ride height; this being a Citroën, it's not as straightforward as that because one is simultaneously aware of the car's width. the brain thus communicates to self: SUV, but that notion is quickly put paid to by the way the interior architecture just seems to drape and slink away, in its inimitably organic fashion. the closest analogy i can think of is riding cocooned in one of those crazy open-air sand buggies of the 1970s, with their cross-braced frames and wide stance.

it's impossible to talk about the DS5 and not mention the glasshouse. not since the XM has a Citroën been endowed with such crazy glazing. but the truth of the matter is it does work, and work well.

it works well because one's mind soon doesn't 'see' the double-A-pillars in the forward field-of-vision, and those extra front quarter-lights which look so featurelessly flat from the outside really do afford curvature for sufficient visibility when taking a sharp corner. the complexity of the glasshouse overhead mirrors the organic musculature and ribbing of the interior, and only serves to reinforce the impression that one is riding in something rather special, as in - to lapse into cliché - a concept car (in this case, the C-SportLounge) has escaped the show floor and somehow made it to production. and that titchy rear screen which looks so ridiculous from the outside? well, because it's almost totally upright, despite its size it offers an unimpeded view out, much like a more conventionally styled car would.

when i returned the car to the garage dealership, there was a C6 parked outside.

it looked - as C6s always do - resolutely serene.

as i drove past, DS5 and C6 were side-by-side, inches from each other.

did i - for a moment - feel a tinge of regret, of what might have been?

truthfully, i cannot say. the interior architecture, the glasshouse, the sense of sheer occasion when behind the wheel of a DS5 - i was more mindful of those.

the king is dead.

long live the king.

four wheels on my inkblot - the Citroën DS5 as a rolling Rorschach test

it has been more than a week since i drove a Citroën DS5 for the first time.

uncharacteristically for me, i have not felt compelled to write about the experience; and i have been spending the past eight days wondering why.

one reason might be that even before the car made its debut in Shanghai last year, i had made my mind up that i would one day own one as my personal means of transport. while that day has not yet come, the knowledge of this has tempered my impetus to write about the car. exactly why this should be the case, i cannot claim to have definitively deconstructed.

never has any car i have owned been such a flawed prospect. cars are inherently compromises, but when putting pen to paper in a contractual agreement, one generally chooses the model with the fewest flaws.

alas, 'generalizations' is not a concept which is easily translated to the vocabulary of the DS5.

with the benefit of a week of introspection, i am leaning towards the suspicion that my writer's block is because i have been entertaining the sacrilegious possibility that the DS5 is not a true Citroën.

what is the essence of the marque?

i have many early memories from my childhood of encounters with (other people's) Citroëns, such as watching a DS plough serenely through a flood, and hitching a lift home one day after school in my classmate's dad's GS.

just as vivid, is the memory of the first time i crawled inside a CX. from the ashtray to the radio, from the instrumentation to the door handles, and of course the strange levers and knobs sprouting from the most obscure angles, the CX was a car like no other.

to my young mind at least, that first encounter with a CX - even though its engine and hydraulic systems were not even activated - seared an indelible impression of what Citroëns were about, an impression possibly matched only by the original DS.

so what of the DS5?

when i call the DS5 to mind, i confront myself with fears and questions. i find myself challenging my own assumptions about the state of how things are, and how they should be.

when i think of the DS5, i do not think of an automobile; instead i see a mirror into myself, into the values i cherish, into the experiences which moulded me as a child, into my own hopes and dreams for the future.

do you really want to know how it drives?

of course you say you do, but tell me again your answer, after a week has passed.

because while the DS5 may not be the answer to life, the universe, and everything, it runs the number 42 pretty darn close.

generalizations be damned.