voyeurism

Push me, pull you - my review of the Citroën DS4 200 DSport

In Hugh Lofting's 1920 classic The Story of Doctor Doolittle, the good doctor meets a great many fascinating creatures, one of which is the neither-fish-nor-fowl pushmi-pullyu.

The obvious ambulatory problems associated with having an independent head at each end of one's anatomy were foremost in my mind when i heard the exciting news earlier this morning that i would be able to test-drive the Citroën DS4 200 DSport :-)

i am going to make the assumption that if you are reading this, you would already be familiar with the conceptual design philosophy (or would that be plural) behind the DS4, so i'm not going to repeat them here.

i was consciously pondering such issues during the drive, as if acquainting myself with the relative spacing of the six forward ratios wasn't enough.

Much has been made of the car's ride height, but if truth be told, i wasn't greatly aware of a particular sense of loftiness - nor of the advantages thereof - although having said that i was able to deftly avoid the swerving antics of fellow motorists due to a closed middle-lane (roadworks - surprise, surprise) with minimal drama.

The throttle response and the slug of torque helped, of course. The fat torque band really means one can afford to hop-skip-and-jump around the six ratios with a fair degree of abandon, forgoing - for example - the odd-numbered ratios for the even ones. Fourth seems particularly close to third, and second is quite adequate from a standing-start; fifth seems to be perfectly usable around town and one does not need to wait for the expressway to dabble with sixth from time to time. The clutch biting point is fairly high-set, and it's combined with the fairly unique pairing of an electronic parking brake, so one can literally up-and-go from the traffic lights, skipping over ratios along the way.

Although having said that, the car does offer one tremendous incentive to plough its elasticity through each one of those six ratios - namely the way it comes on-song from about 3600 rpm. There is already at least one video on YouTube featuring the DSport, purely as a soundtrack.

About that afore-mentioned parking brake, i did become especially conscious of it when stopped at a traffic junction up a slope, and i was wondering how its algorithms would cope with a hill-start (not having three feet). So deep in thought was i, that i missed the light turning green, and was honked (twice) by a blue car behind me. Having moved off, it turned out that the blue car was a suitably be-scooped and be-spoilered Impreza. For the briefest moment, the thought flashed into my mind of flooring the pedal and showing him what's what. But no, i resisted the temptation, because that would have handed him too much satisfaction. So instead, in the spirit of a classic ad for the Honda NSX, i rubbed it in - by driving slowly.

Subaru-man overtook me, of course.

Nonetheless, should the mood so carry you, even aggressive ups-and-goes at T-junctions are fuss-free - the car changing direction with little inertia and feeling all-of-a-piece; in this it shares much with its smaller brother the DS3. All the more credit to the chassis engineers then, given its ride-height; in this it shares much commonality with that other niche-buster, the Evoque. Torque steer doesn't really raise its head - provoke it as i tried. In fact the steering - while still characteristically Citroënesque in its non-communicativeness - feels much more carefully calibrated in terms of its heft than the go-kart application in the DS3.

All rather grown-up, then.

And so, as the drive progressed and i became more familiar with the capabilities and potentialities of its chassis, my attention turned to the less apparent things. That flat-bottomed wheel may look a gimmick, but i experienced a frisson whenever my fingers came in contact with its aluminum finishing - the presence of the latter (and the differential tactility it afforded) contributed greatly to my sense of confidence in placing the car accurately in tight corners, as i soon knew instinctively the angle of the steered wheels as the leather rim and its aluminum finish slid through my fingers.

Did i ever feel i was driving a coupé? Well, yes, to be honest - but only (and ironically) when i was in a carpark, and the lower level of ambient light meant that the cabin architecture was lit. In my peripheral vision, i registered two backlit power window switches by my right hand. Strange though it may seem, this was enough to communicate to me subliminally that i was driving something rather special.

So… family hatchback or slinky coupé? high-riding urban transport or high-performance Golf-frightener?

It makes you think, doesn't it?

It makes you stop, look, ponder, and (perhaps) even trawl up some obscure literary reference from an earlier century.

It helps you realise that the point is not in the destination, but in the journey.

It's something that would be beyond the philosophical reach of Subaru-man.

A worthy Citroën, then.

:-)

[much gratitude to Doris from Cycle & Carriage France, for so kindly facilitating the drive]

all jumped up and nowhere to go :-P

Loeb for a day

There's never a Mini around when you need one.

Here i was, behind a leathered and aluminiumed wheel, in a car sufficiently bestickered to make a WRC-fan do a double-take, ensconced in frame-hugging alcantara, but with nary a Mini in sight to put the frighteners on.

Hmm... i thought to myself, looks like this A1-provocateur, this Mini-nemesis, would have to content itself with taking the fight to another day.

In retrospect, not having any of the Citroën DS3's natural rivals around worked to my benefit, for it helped me concentrate on the car itself.

Having stepped straight into it from my beloved C5, the biggest contrast that struck me was the sheer skittishness of the DS3.

The DS3 was like a terrier to the C5's St Bernard.

if 'skittish' is the word that endures in my mind when i think of the DS3, the equivalent reaction from my C5 would be 'creamy'.

Mind, while this may be my lasting (and, by no means, negative) impression of the DS3, it was not my first. This was my third time driving a DS3, so i knew what to expect. i knew about the lightness of its steering at low speeds. I knew that its glovebox lid plumbs the depths of frangibility. i knew about the secure, hefty weight of the doors. And i knew well about the fundamental sortedness of its chassis.

So, my attention turned to other things - the kind of things one tends to miss on a test-drive. Such as how the sound-insulation - lauded by the British motoring press - does indeed do an admirable job in keeping road-noise out (i'm looking at you, Mini). Alas, the exhaust note on this naturally-aspirated version was unrelentingly deadpan and made tootling around town bordering on choredom, as if the DS3 was trying to communicate that it really wanted to be let loose and blasted down a winding country lane.

And then, there's that skittishness. I am tempted to prefix- but ultimately am refraining from prefixing - the word 'unmistakeable' to 'skittishness', because - in all fairness to the DS3, the C5 does set rather a high bar with regards its sheer ability to isolate.

i didn't notice it was skittish at first. What i did notice was the accuracy of the steering, the way you could point-and-shoot into a corner, the wheel's perfect weighting at speed and as forces build up - leading you in, but never fighting against you.

Then i started noticing bumps and surface imperfections on roads, which i had not known were there before. These were the same roads that i travel every day, several times a day, in my C5. Well... duh... :-P

Then, at certain road crests, i noticed more vertical movement than i would normally be accustomed to.

And that is when the word 'skittish' popped into my head.

The DS3 is like a modern fly-by-wire jet-fighter. It's nimble, and almost inherently unstable (by design).

Like its big brother the C5, the DS3 loves to engage its driver in conversation.

But my goodness is the nature of the conversations different!

In the C5, the conversations one has are all philosophical and about the nature of existentialism. The driver is given the space to contemplate and reflect, cocooned in silence and perfectly isolated from everything the outside world can throw at him.

In the DS3, the chat is more frenetic. Do you remember the opening scene of the film The Social Network? Driving the DS3 is like that :-)

Which is not a bad thing, because the conversation can potentially be just as philosophical as in the C5, but in a much more rapid-fire environment.

So, these were my thoughts and conclusions as i approached the dying minutes of my half-day tenureship of the DS3.

And then... and then... literally mere metres before my turning into the Citroën showroom to regretfully return the car, i saw it.

It was a fiery red Alfa Romeo MiTo, on a test-drive.

He was approaching me from the opposite direction of the road.

Instinctively, i knew what i had to do.

I nudged that lovely leather wheel one last time, such that my direction of travel was not entirely parallel with the road.

i knew that at this angle, the MiTo test-driver could not fail to notice me, as my LED DRLs would be directly lined up with his field-of-vision.

I tapped the accelerator, the car barked forward, and then i turned sharply into the showroom.

Mission accomplished :-)

**********

My sincere gratitude to the good folks at Cycle and Carriage for their trust, and for so kindly and magnanimously facilitating this excursion. Thank you, Bryan Tan, for seeing to the paperwork.

Parallelisms - a brief essay on Tron, hydropneumatics, and Citroëns

Does God exist?

Please pardon this pretentious way of initiating a conversation, but one can't help thinking about the nature of the Divine - one could say we have been designed to do so.

Such thoughts have been on my mind over the past twelve hours, because it's been one of those days when too many things have concurrently happened that help you have a deeper appreciation of what Depeche Mode meant when they said that "God has a sense of humour".

Even this throwback to the lyrics of a song written at the height of 1980s New Wave is appropriate to today's philosophical poser, because watching Tron: Legacy reeks of self-referetialism to a simpler time of chunky graphics and opaque lines of code.

Indeed opacity - or rather the tension between opacity and transparency - is a running theme within Tron: Legacy, and by some curious happy happenstance (i'm deliberately steering away from the 'c' word) - in the context of a metaverse so full of data that it's literally leaking at the seams - it lends the timing of the release of the movie a topicality that its producers could only have dreamed of.

In my personal pantheon of all-time cool movies, Tron: Legacy is definitely way up there, alongside Gattaca and The Truman Show. Like the latter two, Tron: Legacy succeeds because it provokes thinking about the nature of the human condition.

Emerging from the cinema after the philosophical- and cognitive-LSD-induced-overload that is Tron: Legacy, i experienced a multi-sensory meltdown - i guess it was like waking up from a deep slumber: there were sights and sounds around me but i struggled to make sense of them.

And that must be why i found my favourite car underwhelming.

Could a Citroën ever be a letdown?

Umm yes… stand up please, LN, AX, ZX and Saxo.

Could a Citroën ever be an anticlimax?

i hadn't thought so… till yesterday.

The Citroën in question was the C5 1.6 THP 6-speed automatic… with conventional steel suspension.

i hate to say it, but i do not think that that latter factor - admittedly the most obvious candidate - is the primary reason for why i find myself struggling to think of anything to write about the car.

Yes, there were three people in the car, yes, traffic conditions were not ideal, but even when gaps did open up, i could summon sufficient forward thrust and at regulable rates, but… but did i have fun driving the car? did i experience a moment of epiphany?

Maybe God dispenses a maximum of one epiphany per day, and i had already had mine, cinematically.

You want to know specifics about the car? Well, its steering is lighter than that in my C5 2.0, it tends to creep less while at a standstill, and yes, road-surface imperfections do come through and are more sharply felt.

And… oh yes, those LED DRLs do look cool.

But does it engage you in questions of existentialism like the best (ie, hydropneumatic) Citroëns do?

Bearing in mind that i have every intention of getting a DS5 (which will not available with hydropneumatic suspension) in 2013 - i have to say the jury is still out on that one.

So… enough about the car. Let's go back to more interesting questions, about, say, the existence of God.

Timing is everything in humour, and as a Christian i firmly believe that the timing of yesterday's events - in which two long-eagerly-anticipated-events took place (without prior planning) within the space of a few hours - was no coincidence (there, i said the 'c' word).

The co-incidence (that hyphen makes ALL the difference, by the way) of the two events brought into sharp relief the parallelisms between the two.

Both come from historical trajectories of strong, rich, cultures - Citroën and Disney: now _there's_ something to get the creative juices flowing. Both acknowledge - to varying degrees - their respective cultural trajectories; while at the same time being unashamed reinterpretations (not reboots, the way Star Trek (2009) was) to inspire the next generation of participatory engagements. Both have the potential - though in one it is extremely latent - to provoke their participants into exploring wider questions beyond the immediate.

Both exploit glowing light-streams to full visual effect; and let's not forget which country Daft Punk hail from :-)

But is that all there is? Is there a there, there?

There is one final piece of the puzzle, and it was presented - in God's perfect timing - just before midnight, just before i went to bed.

As you may know, the Citroën DS3 is BBC Top Gear's Car of the Year for 2010.

As is my habit, i check Top Gear's website a couple of times a day to keep myself abreast of developments in the motoring industry.

When the page loaded last night, it referenced a video-interview that Top Gear Editor-at-large Jason Barlow (himself a big Citroën fan) conducted with key individuals in the Tron: Legacy team.

It's a short, six-minute, clip, so you can easily watch it for yourself.

At two minutes into the clip, Jeff Bridges shares "the favourite car he ever had".

Considering the context of this essay - you'll get no prizes for guessing what it was.

But then, Jeff does something more than just say the name "Citroën DS21".

Watch him - his right hand goes up… first at the wrist, then at the finger-tips.

Hear him - he emits a hiss from his lips.

It is unmistakeable - Jeff is describing an embodied - epiphanic - experience with a car.

You think those updated light-cycles in Tron: Legacy are incredible?

Wait till you try a hydropneumatically-suspended Citroën.

Augmented Reality demonstration at Citroën's C42 showroom

here's a short video depicting an Augmented Reality demo at Citroën's C42 showroom.

the 3D image of the C4 is projected on to the piece of paper i'm holding :-)

visit to the Citroën Conservatoire!

please pardon the brevity of this post - i'm extremely sleepy :-P

here are pictures from my visit to the Citroën Conservatoire at Aulnay-sous-Bois :-)

i am very, very grateful to everyone who has in some way or another contributed to my being able to make this visit-of-a-lifetime / long-cherished-dream-come-true.

comparative essay on the Porsche Panamera V6 and the BMW 535i Gran Turismo

i test drove the Porsche Panamera V6 and BMW 535i GT yesterday.

depending on your point-of-view, these two cars may or may not be natural rivals. in Singapore, the two are priced sufficiently close to be, with the difference being about eight percent of the less expensive car's (in this case, it is the Panamera's) upfront price (i'm expressing the price differential in this way (as a percentage rather than as an absolute figure), given the skewed nature of car prices in Singapore because of the way cars are taxed here).

price similarities aside, another (albeit tongue-in-cheek) way to think about it is that they are both German hatchbacks :-P

both cars represent something of a design experiment for their respective marques, the Panamera being Porsche's first 'proper' (ie, non-SUV) rear-doored-saloon, and the 5 Gran Turismo being, well, ...

much journalistic ink has been spilled about the 5 Gran Turismo's push-me-pull-you, schizoid design.

like all great designs with the potential to truly outlast their originally-conceptualised shelf-life, the design of the 5 Gran Turismo polarises opinion. it's impossible not to form a strong initial opinion of the car, but like all great designs, this initial strong opinion will find itself sculpted and nudged and taken in unanticipated directions.

the 5 Gran Turismo makes an incredibly strong (there's that word again) visual statement, about itself, and - by critical extension - its driver. this is not a BMW for BMW-fans. no, Toto, we're not in Kansas any more.

in some ways, the Panamera has also been charged with growing the brand, with taking and extending the marque into new, conquest markets.

on the surface of course, the potential market for the Panamera is (relatively) huge, very obvious, and undeniably lucrative. this is a car that was launched at the Shanghai motor show in 2009, after all. yes, the Panamera is Porsche's calling-card into the rarified world which has traditionally been the domain of the S-class, the XJ, and (less traditionally, but to take a leaf out of Top Gear's hat) the Quattroporte and (for high-end Panamera models) the Rapide.

yes, it's obvious how the Panamera will help grow the Porsche brand.

being obvious, on the other hand, is a concept which is entirely alien to the 5 Gran Turismo.

and - i am confident the passage of time will prove me right - this alienably unobvious nature is the 5 Gran Turismo's greatest strength, and its trumping ace.

because the 5 Gran Turismo is impossible to pigeon-hole, it casts deep, probing hits into its potential clientele's subconscious, as opposed to the Panamera's much more generalised strategy of diffusive spread.

these deep, probing hits hit one's brain and mind in places where - and in aspects in which - one didn't even know existed.

the 5 Gran Turismo - in each of its potential target markets (SUV, luxury limousine, sports sedan, and whatever else) - will appeal to only a (relatively) tiny segment of the population, but by golly once they've been smited, nothing else will be good enough for them and shortlists will magically be wiped clean.

the question is, of course, whether time will tell whether these several, extremely-targeted deep-impacts will sum up to sufficiently commercially viable figures for BMW.

i really hope they do, because the 5 Gran Turismo is a wonderful, unforgettable, car.

it challenges all preceding notions of beauty and stands them on their head, in its own inimicable post-modern Web 2.0 mashed-up way.

take it for granted that both cars handle fluidly and deliver strong, usable performance adequate for both everyday conditions and the weekend Grand Tour.

instead, consider the intangible feeling of bien-etre one offers in spades, while the other struggles to deliver.

consider how this same intangible bien-etre manifests itself through their respective interior architectures - one, with its grand sweeps and arcs, being designed from a philosophy which truly lives 'less is more' rather than just mouthing it as a meaningless platitude; the other, with its busy, slabbish man-machine interface which never seems to recede into the background and let the driver get on with the driving.

both cars are built for the cross-continental Grand Tour.

only one will accomplish this supremely.

for while the Porsche Panamera is simply complex, the BMW 5 Gran Turismo is complexly simple.

********

my grateful thanks to Jason Lim and Algean Tan of Stuttgart Auto Pte Ltd, and to Patsy Chua of Performance Motors Ltd, for so kindly making the respective cars available, and for their time today :-)

pilgrimages

as a follow-up to my preceding post, it's interesting to ponder the importance of place in reinforcing / affirming identity.

i've visited Infinite Loop,

i've visited Battery Street,

and within a month - with God's grace - i'll be able to visit Le Conservatoire du patrimoine :-)

Vee One... Rotate!

many thanks to my able instructor and 'co-pilot' Sam - over at iPilot Bluewater - for his kind coaching and steady hand at the yoke, which greatly helped to mediate my control inputs to the Boeing 737.

i've fulfilled a life-long dream, thanks to you, Sam.

together, we took off from London Heathrow, landed successfully at Singapore Changi, then did a take-off-and-go-around aborted approach at St Maarten, and finally did a fantastical take-off from Chep Lap Kok, then made a low pass over Kowloon harbour and finally made _that_ infamous approach into Kai Tak, which i (with a lot of help from Sam) successfully negotiated and brought the plane down safely without having to overrun into the water :-)

on trust and branding in the age of social media - a study in contrasts

this morning, i experienced an interesting contrast in understandings of trust and branding, at two separate dealerships in the local car industry here in Singapore.

both visits were spontaneous, and - therefore- unannounced.

at Trans Eurokars (i'm deliberately not including the hyperlink, as any publicity can be construed as good publicity), they had brought in a left-hand-drive unit of one of their new models, as a preview for potential customers (while the right-hand-drive units were being homologated by the local regulatory authorities).

i arrived at the showroom actually pretty keen on being positive about the car, as i nearly bought its predecessor back in 1999, and my cousin actually owned two.

i was therefore quite prepared to overlook the fact that the rear lamp units had obviously poor panel gaps, as water had clearly condensed in them; further, i didn't really mind that the boot couldn't be opened because the battery had ostensibly run flat.

after about ten minutes in the showroom, i was still feeling perky and therefore i remarked to the salesperson that i would like to take a photo - i made this remark more as a courtesy, than as a request for permission.

the salesperson's facial expression betrayed a lack of understanding and concern, so i went on to attempt to assuage him that "i am trying to help you publicise".

to which he replied that he needed to seek clearance from his supervisor first.

this threw me, and i was further disappointed when i saw the salesperson and his supervisor having a non-brief conversation (with glances in my direction).

i therefore promptly walked out of the showroom and drove off.

*****

i drove to the Citroën showroom, which is managed by Cycle and Carriage.

my intent of going there was actually to see the C3, which is being launched in Singapore this weekend.

when i entered the showroom i was greeted by one of the salespersons - admittedly a friend of mine - who promptly (and totally without any initiating on my part) invited me to drive her own personal car - a newly-delivered DS3 1.6 THP with the 6-speed manual gearbox.

of course, i kindly declined (it was her own car, after all) and thanked her for her magnanimity.

she pressed on, however, so i followed her and got into the passenger seat.

she said "no, you drive" and handed me the keys.

i held the passenger door open for her.

she then floored me with "no, you go ahead on your own - i trust you"

needless to say, i verified with her, just in case i had misheard.

she insisted she was fine with me taking her own freshly-minted DS3 Turbo unsupervised.

*****

the moral of the story?

i had really wanted to promote the car that Trans Eurokars had brought in, but in the end i find myself blogging about my experience at the dealership, for all the wrong reasons - as a direct result of their Ludditic attempt to exercise total control of their brand, based on an anachronistic (mis)understanding of trust and social capital in this age of viral marketing and social media.

the irony is that i as a middle-aged politically-liberal academic, i believe i fit into the typical demographic profile of the marque's target clientele.

in contrast, at Citroën Cycle and Carriage, i went in with no intention of test-driving anything, but was instead entrusted with someone's precious personal car, and given carte blanche to go where i liked, and how i liked.

vive la France :-)

Clarkson, Hammond and May on the Citroën DS3

from Series 15 Episode 2 of BBC Top Gear (original air date 4 July 2010):

*****

Clarkson:
"oh now, there aren't very many things that we all agree on, except this: we all think that the best small car that you can buy at the moment is the Citroën DS3. we're not joking about this, that is a genuinely brilliant little car"

Hammond:
"there's something about it, it's like a Mini that smokes Gauloises"

Clarkson:
"it is, it's fantastic"

May:
"the weird thing is, it's got exactly the same engine as the Mini, hasn't it, but it just feels better"

Clarkson:
"it does, it's great"

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