The new Citroën ë-C5 Aircross has gone on sale, priced from £34,065, undercutting key rivals such as the Skoda Enyaq by £5000.
The SUV was revealed in April with a bold new design language and the option of electric power for the first time, as the French brand renews its assault on Europe's crucial crossover market.
The new C5 also goes on sale with combustion-engined power from £30,495. That starting price is £2000 more than the car it replaces and puts it in the same bracket as rivals such as the new Mazda CX-5 and Nissan Qashqai.
The range starts in base You! trim, which includes a 13in touchscreen with built-in navigation, wireless phone charger, adaptive cruise control and 18in alloys.
Pricing tops out in Max trim at £35,775 for the ICE model and £39,345 for the EV. This adds premium materials, a larger head-up display, heated front seat and steering wheel, electric tailgate and a heatpump for the EV.
Prices for the EV could drop by as much as £3750 if the model is eligible for the UK government's new electric car grant - eligible cars will be named on 11 August.
Based on parent company Stellantis's new STLA Medium architecture (as used by the Peugeot 3008 and Vauxhall Grandland), the second-generation C5 Aircross is the flagship of an overhauled Citroën line-up and sits above recently refreshed and renewed versions of the Ami, C3 and C4.
At launch, the C5 Aircross is offered as either a 143bhp hybrid (which pairs a 1.2-litre three-cylinder petrol engine with a small electric motor) or a 207bhp EV with a 73kWh battery giving 322 miles of range (or 321 miles in Max guise).
After launch, two other powertrains will be offered. One is a plug-in hybrid set-up that pairs a 1.6-litre four-cylinder petrol engine with an electric motor and a 21kWh battery for 193bhp and 53 miles of engine-off driving. The other is a 227bhp EV that uses a larger 97kWh pack to offer 421 miles of range.
DESIGN
As promised to Autocar by designer Pierre Leclerq, the production version of the new C5 Aircross stays true to the bold concept car that was revealed last year at the Paris motor show. It retains the minimalistic two-box silhouette of the previous C5 Aircross but features a wide-reaching focus on aerodynamics in a bid to increase efficiency.
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Another Stellantis sh@t box, I feel bad for all these brands with their cost cutting cousin spin offs. VW has shown you can do this reasonably successfully.
Haters will hate. Great car.
Rich coming from a VAG, Tesla etc hater!
Seriously? I don't hate any car brand and don't live any either. I wouldn't buy a tesla due to horrendous ergonomics, but that's far from hating. And one of my cars is VAG, so you took that straight from your brexitard arse, which is what your kind usually does.
But you don't waste any changes to puke your hatred, like you've already done on this article. It must be the only bright side of your miserable existence.
How's taking back control going, by the way? Try getting back control of your state of mind, hater.
Except it isn't "bold", or have "concept styling", its actually quite a generic shape, just with a few sticky out lights grafted on.
Nice on the inside, dog shit on the out. Don't like the Citroen badge either, cheapens the entire product.