Citroen C5 - Family View : CIT DOWN AND SHUT UP

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How will Citroen's C5 saloon cope with the rigours of a family holiday? Steve Walker finds out.

Ah the family holiday. It brings back so many memories, most of them involving a marathon car journey followed by seven days sheltering from arctic weather patterns in some comically flimsy accommodation. Waking up to find your tent lodged in a nearby tree or that the rented caravan has suffered water ingress on the sort of scale that meant curtains for the Titanic was all part of the fun. Even the car journey tended to be an event in itself as everyone decamped to the family saloon for four hours or more of turmoil. It's as stern a test of a vehicle as you can get and we thought it was time that our Citroen C5 long term test car earned its stripes.

Recruiting a pair of pre-teens for the trip proved unexpectedly easy, the in-laws worryingly keen to accept the offer of some parenting respite. We'd organised a weekend away rather than the full-blown seven day holiday, just to be on the safe side and with the C5 saloon doing the leg work there was an air of quiet confidence on the Saturday morning. Our three-day odyssey was never going to put the strain on the C5's carrying capacity that a proper family holiday would but the C5's boot swallowed what we needed it to. The boot isn't as practical as the hatchbacks offered by many of the C5's rivals but the opening is wide and there's the option of folding the rear seats down to increase capacity if you've less than a full complement of rear seat passengers. The total space with the seats up is 439 litres. With no overspill of luggage onto the rear seats, there was plenty of space for a couple of occupants. With the driver's seat adjusted for a six-footer there's plenty of legroom for another large-ish adult behind but headroom is less abundant thanks to the C5's sloping roofline. Fortunately, at ages eight and twelve, our back seat passengers were substantially less than six feet tall - a factor that we hoped would lead to a handy under-spend on the food budget.

"â€¦it excels on longer trips like this where the quiet cabin and cushy ride take some beating"

The C5's front seats are supportive and have a good range of adjustment built in but the base section slopes forward too much. With a long journey to cover, the back massaging function mentioned in the owners manual sounded idea and probably would have been had we seen fit to specify it on our car. Attempts to control the stereo and air-conditioning systems that are so crucial on any road trip soon flagged up a flaw in the C5's design. The various buttons are squished together on the centre console, they're small and they aren't easy to get the hang of. More controls mounted on the steering wheel provide another way of changing the stereo settings but in general, the C5's secondary systems are tougher to operate than you'd want. Previous drives in the C5 had shown that it's strengths on the road lay more in the areas of comfort and refinement than handling and performance. It's no slouch when hurried through a series of corners but on this family car journey exercise that was a borderline irrelevance. A couple of hours in and we'd had barely a squeak from the troublemakers in the rear who were taking the opportunity to catch up on some crucial iPod time. The sense that there was a ticking time bomb of truculence on the back seats waiting to explode never really materialised and that can be put down, at least in part to the, smoothness of the C5. Our diesel engine was barely audible at motorway speeds where the main sound was the flutter of wind noise around the A pillars. The main award for keeping the journey as free from `are we there yets' as it was must go to the Hydractive 3 Plus self levelling suspension. This system sets the C5 apart from the medium range saloon pack, adapting to the road surface in order to deliver a magic carpet ride. It lets the driver select from three modes that offer progressively firmer suspension settings for a sportier driving experience or a more comfortable one, as required. Lesser models lack this feature but they're still set up for long distance comfort rather than B-road blasting. When you think how the majority of C5s will be used, it's hard to dispute that this is the right way to go. We reached our holiday destination in good time and decent shape thanks to the C5's cruising ability and a couple of children whose good behaviour threw our own shenanigans on family outings gone by into stark relief. The journey showed Citroen's saloon in a very favourable light, it excels on longer trips like this where the quiet cabin and cushy ride take some beating, even in cars costing substantially more. The weekend passed off with good weather and no notable mishaps or accommodation failures (BandB beats tent every time). We even arrived home feeling relatively relaxed, so we must have been doing something wrong.

Facts At A Glance
CAR: Citroen C5 range
PRICES: £16,695-£26,395 - on the road
INSURANCE GROUPS: 8-13
CO2 EMISSIONS: 149-212g/km
PERFORMANCE: [2.0 HDi] Max Speed 127mph / 0-60mph 11.6s
FUEL CONSUMPTION: [2.0 HDi] (urban) 35.8mpg / (extra urban) 57.6mpg / (combined) 47.1mpg
STANDARD SAFETY FEATURES: Twin Front, side and curtain airbags / ABS / ESP
WILL IT FIT IN YOUR GARAGE?: [saloon] Length/Width/Height 4779/1853/1458mm