DS No 8 review

As outside, DS has settled on its own look. The dash is a sharp-edged plane, with an upholstered rail below. That flows into the door speakers, laser-cut grilles of the same brushed metal, and their aft edges serve as door grab handles. Not obvious, so it's a bit of a puzzle to shut the door first time. That handle also glows softly by night. The optional Focal stereo behind those grilles is a crystal-clear banger.

It's not your usual premium-car padded black cell. In fact there are no black options at all in the UK launch range: it's blue, grey and tan. All the soft surfaces have interesting stitch patterns.

The steering wheel is worth a mention, with its four spokes in an x-shape, and button pods sprouting from the hub. It looks like you'll never get a comfy hand grip, but we soon did and never thought about it again.

The seats are terrific, front and back. Soft, supporting, very much deluxe. There’s loads of space in the rear too, although foot room is a little tight with the front seats right down on the floor. If they're adjusted a little upwards that sorts it.

Anyway a slightly raised driving position is, as crossover sales show, what most people want. An option is a neck warmer for the front ones, another smart way to avoid wasteful cabin space-heating by concentrating heat directly on the people. But we found them quite noisy in operation.

The boot is long fore-to-aft and voluminous in totality, at 620 litres. It also gets a split level floor – handy for storing any dirty charging cables, particularly as there's no space under the bonnet.

All models get a 12.25in instrument cluster, a 16in central touchscreen, plus a big HUD in all models. They give you scope to display all the info you need, all at once.

The touchscreen is pleasingly snappy and the perimeter has plenty of permanent icons and shortcuts, and there's also a row of hard switches below, but these are limited to the bare minimum, such as turning on the front and rear demisters. Their slightly odd semi-haptic action sometimes asks for a second jab, though.

Most operations require a deepdive into the touchscreen, though the temperature adjustment for front driver and passenger are at least permanently displayed on either side. One benefit of a widescreen, we suppose.