Citroen C5 Aircross Hybrid - long-term review

Recently, I spent a few days driving a Volkswagen Multivan. Not a sentence that normally gets the blood pumping. It's a van with windows. The sort of thing you expect to see outside a hotels and airports.

Except… it's brilliant.

Not because it's fast. It isn't. Not because it's exciting. It really isn't. But because it does the thing so many modern family cars seem to have forgotten. It puts usefulness first.

You sit high, but not in an awkward way. The windows are huge, so people in the back can actually see out. The sliding doors make life easier in car parks. And because it's basically a box, every inch of it is doing something useful.

That got me thinking. When did we all decide the family SUV was the answer? For a while, the MPV was the default family car. Up to seven seats, big windows, a massive boot and enough cubby holes to lose half your house in. They weren't glamorous, but they made sense.

Then SUVs arrived. They looked tougher, sat higher and somehow became the thing everyone wanted. Never mind that plenty of them came with fewer seats, smaller windows and a bigger footprint than the MPVs they replaced. Of course, Citroen hasn't stopped making MPVs. The Berlingo and SpaceTourer are still here, and they're still enormously practical. But the problem is it feels like you've made a compromise before you've even opened the door. You don't get the C5 Aircross's big waterfall screen. You don't get the soft fabric-covered dash or the lounge-like cabin. It's useful, yes. But it still feels van-adjacent, and that's where SUVs have won. People don't just want space. They want a bit of luxury too.

Volkswagen proved there's a market for that with the ID. Buzz. It wraps MPV practicality in a design people actually aspire to own. The trouble is, by the time you've added a few options, you're nudging £70,000. That's hardly the people's MPV.

Which brings me back to the C5 Aircross. Living with it has made me realise something. Citroen is still very good at building comfortable, practical family cars. The C5 proves that. I just can't help thinking those same ideas could work even better in something that wasn't another SUV. That's why Citroen's ELO concept gives me hope. Not because I expect the six-seat concept car with its central driving position to arrive exactly as shown. It won't. But the thinking behind it feels properly Citroen. Huge windows. Clever packaging. Even the low window line is deliberate. Citroen's designers have talked about wanting kids in the back to actually be able to see out. Citroen calls it an 'MPV 2.0', and for once the marketing might actually be onto something.

Because that's what family cars should be doing. Not pretending to climb mountains. Not looking like vans with better seats. Just making life easier without making you feel like you've bought the boring option. Maybe that's the gap in the market. Not another affordable SUV. An affordable MPV that doesn't make you feel like you're missing out.