I HAVE already, dear reader, used these columns to vent my spleen about the move by Citroën to establish its new brand — DS Automobiles — as a paean to all the travails undergone in recent years by the Citroën brand itself.

We first saw the Citroën C4 hatchback in 2010 and if we were relatively underwhelmed back then by the car’s ordinariness, we pretty much still are today.

Many moons ago the late Beatle John Lennon was being quizzed by the media when one bright spark asked him if Ringo [Starr, the band’s drummer] was the best drummer in the world.

CITROEN likes to think it has always pioneered ground-breaking automotive design. The problematic word is ‘always’, because while the dynamic

THERE has been a steady upmarket trend going on chez Citroën for some time and in recent times we have seen the brand undertake a shift of emphasis from making normal workaday products to providing us with a choice of several very appealing haute couture machines.

IT may be that Citroen’s parent company PSA is in the throes of a serious collapse in market share across Europe right now and that the owners are becoming increasingly keen on a sale or part-sale of the group to General Motors, but ironically the French marque has hardly been in a better place in recent times in terms of its product line-up.

CITROEN Ireland must hate my writing. I like their cars but my recent reviews are like a treatise on the French economy.

MY Citroen reviews have followed a pattern, but this week I am reviewing the extraordinary new DS5 and as the company has thrown convention to the wind, so too am I.

WE could keep you here all day banging on about how Citroën has developed so many technologies and combined that with the sort of design élan which is all too uncommon within the broader automotive industry across so many decades.