► The plug is about to be pulled on the Citroen C5 X
► Dyed-in-the-wool Citroeniste Keith Adams is not happy
► It might not have been perfect but at least it was interesting…
It’s been a long time coming, but it still hurts. The Citroen C5 X is quietly slipping out of production next month, and with it goes another slice of the brand’s brave, brilliant individuality. For me, someone who’s spent a lifetime loving Citroens, this feels personal and deeply disappointing.
The C5 X wasn’t perfect, but it was at least different. It was a car that stood apart from the endless tide of me-too SUVs tediously and aggressively flooding our roads, an echo of a time when Citroen didn’t just build cars, it built ideas on wheels.
Not that the firm seems to see it that way. Caroline Malleus, Citroen’s UK product boss, pulled no punches when she said: ‘This kind of car, the C5 X, was not a success for us.’ CEO Thierry Koskas went further: ‘I don’t think that Citroen has much to do with the D-segment… it’s such a tight segment – as soon as you enter it, you go along with the premium brands.’ In other words: merçi, mais non merçi.
It’s hard to argue with the logic. D-segment saloons and estates are dying on their feet across Europe. Buyers want SUVs, and if you are not wearing a three-pointed star or four rings on your grille, you’re in for a tough time. But for those of us who remember what Citroen once was, there is something profoundly sad about seeing the brand so readily throw the white flag of surrender.
Citroen used to be so special, and driving one an event. The CX, GS, SM, even the oft-maligned XM and gloriously misguided C6, all dared to do things differently. They floated where others jolted. They looked like nothing else and were instantly recognisable as products of their proud maker. They were uncompromising, unpredictable, and, for those who understood them, truly wonderful.
The C5 X, in its own way, tried to channel some of that spirit. It was the fag end of the firm’s proud past – part saloon, part estate, part SUV, and wholly hard to categorise. Good. It rode beautifully, had an interesting, Citroenesque shape, and treated its driver to a level of comfort that most rivals anywhere its price point could only dream of.
It was far from perfect. It did not sell in vast numbers. The engines weren’t up to the task (but neither were they in the DS, CX and C6). But it mattered, because it showed that Citroen still could make a car that defied convention, even in today’s topsy-turvy world. Now it seems Stellantis has other plans. Koskas describes the C5 Aircross, a likeable but hardly revolutionary mid-sized SUV, as the brand’s new ‘flagship.’ He is open about the company’s ambitions: smaller, cheaper, simpler cars, aimed at mass-market buyers rather than dreamers.
In isolation, it makes sense. But for anyone who loves Citroen’s glorious, unconventional past, it feels like death by a thousand compromises. Stellantis is now pretty much all the way towards becoming the latter-day British Leyland or General Motors – a sprawling corporate giant that manages to squander the brilliance of its brands through a deadly cocktail of short-term mismanagement, badge engineering, and creative malaise. Shame on you, Stellantis. Try learning from history.
If the dead hand of Stellantis’s management intends for Citroen to become some kind of answer to Dacia, that is fine, I get it. But at least let it out-Dacia Dacia by injecting some proper double-chevron ingenuity into the range. The BX proved you could be radical and accessible. The GS delivered excellence into an affordable family car (at a huge loss to its maker, admittedly).
Citroen has done it before. It could do it again if it really wanted to. Heck, electrification could be the perfect platform from which to recapture its former mojo. See Renault for a life lesson in how it’s done.
Today’s Citroen seems unsure whether to embrace its past or forget it altogether. The C5 X was a rare recent example of the brand remembering who it was supposed to be. The Cactus was another, and that remains unreplaced, too. The loss of the C5 X matters, not just because it is one less interesting car on the road, but because it represents a surrender of ambition.
There are still flickers of individuality, such as the tiny Ami quadricycle and the charmingly odd C4, but they feel like sideshows rather than a coherent identity.
Without that true spark for innovation, Citroen risks becoming a brand without a cause. Another box-ticking mass-market player without a USP, jostling for attention in a sea of sameness – and one only needs to look at the dead marques once served up by British Leyland and General Motors to see where that could end up.
Maybe that is inevitable. Maybe the world no longer has room for a brand that floats when everyone else rides, that dares to be divisive. But if Citroen gives up on what makes it different, it is giving up on what makes it matter. The C5 X deserved better. Citroen deserves better. And deep down, so do we.
