Citroen C-Crosser

Road test

Depreciation doesn’t feature highly in the Top Gear road test lexicon – in fact, it’s right down there between women’s shoes and lentil recipies – but I couldn’t get the dreaded D-word out of my head while driving the petrol C-Crosser.

Not because it’s some awfully built lump of tat that’s going to disintegrate as soon as you get it off the forecourt – quite the opposite, in fact – but just because it ticks so many of those boxes that add up to a resale value that’ll plummet faster than an estate agent’s credit rating. Let’s face it, an advert for ‘Big, petrol-powered, automatic French 4x4 seeks owner for fun, friendship and maybe more’ won’t get many red circles on the classifieds page.  Which is a shame, because the petrol C-Crosser’s a good car. 

The 2.4-litre four is powerful and responsive, if a bit short on outright pace, and fits well with the paddle-shifting CVT gearbox. Good thing, too – this is the only clutchless C-Crosser available. It’s a bit thirsty, mind: Citroen quotes 30mpg, but we struggled to top 20mpg on our test drive. Fully kitted up, though, the C-Crosser becomes a glitzy bit of kit – there’s a cracking satnav, plush leather and, it’s worth mentioning, a brilliant stereo: order a top-spec C-Crosser, and you get a set of speakers powerful enough to cause long-term organ damage if you’re heavy on the volume button.

Well, you’ve got to do something to drown out the sound of all that cash flowing away...