DS Crossback review

Any nation can make a high-tech car, but only the French can make this one, they're saying.

It's about the materials, the jewellery, the motifs. Sure enough that diamond pattern reverberates across the cabin like the print on a headscarf. It's there in the shape of the switchgear, the graphics of the screens, the vents, the layout. Even the knurling of the switches – using, if you please, a luxury French word: guillochage.

Yes it's blingy but it's refreshingly distinctive. There is a feeling of plushness about much of the cabin, and the cheaper bits are mostly out of the way.

The centre touchscreen is what we now expect from the PSA Group. Its graphics are OK and the processor snappy. But it could use a couple more hardware switches. The driver gets seek/scan buttons on the steering wheel, but there are none the passenger can reach.

The instruments sacrifice clarity to the diamond design. Sigh. Better shell out for the usefully clear head-up display then.

The front seats hold you nicely. Being stuck in the back isn't so great. Space doesn't quite match some of the non-premium mob, and the windows are shallow, with the kick-up to the shark's fin making it even more claustrophobic. Small kids are going to hate that.

The E-Tense's cabin space is no botch-up. The battery is shaped to fit where there's space vacated by absent combustion-engine stuff: under the front seats, in the exhaust tunnel, in place of the fuel tank and spare wheel. Everyone's legroom is unaffected and the boot is intact too.