Citroen C5 Aircross 2026 review | A down-to-earth family SUV with plenty of room

What is the Citroen C5 Aircross?

There was something about the old Citroen C5 Aircross that was quite likeable. With its gentle, rounded styling, versatile seating, big boot and a strong emphasis on comfort about the way it drove, it always felt like a friendly car, and one that was well suited to the rigours of family life. And while it didn’t trouble the best-sellers lists, the C5 Aircross found favour among its owners who valued the way it made their lives less stressful, and more hassle-free.

Is the second-generation C5 Aircross more of the same? Citroen’s designers have given it slightly more angular lines, with eye-catching rear lights and lots of unusual design cues to help it stand out from the crowd. And what a crowd it is: this mid-sized family SUV segment is thronged with talent, though the C5 Aircross has grown somewhat for this generation, and is now longer than the Hyundai Tucson, Kia Sportage, Volkswagen Tiguan, and so on, that it formerly played against.

Now, it sits half-way between those rivals and the Skoda Kodiaq, making it almost as long as a Nissan X-Trail, although the C5 Aircross remains resolutely a five-seater, instead using that extra length to provide a massive boot and cavernous rear space. This, then, is an affordable family SUV that will be treasured by those who love to carry a lot of stuff, but is that all it has to offer?

How practical is it?

Let’s start with that boot. You get a double-height boot floor that you can leave up to create a flush floor with a slim, hidden space for valuables beneath, or move down to create a whopping 651-litre space for all your holiday luggage.

Delve into the figures a little and you’ll find that the Volkswagen Tiguan boasts an almost identical amount of space, despite being almost a metre shorter. That said, the Tiguan’s boot is about as big as you’ll get in a car of its size, and most rivals’ are smaller. In other words, the C5 Aircross matches the class best for boot space.

What’s more, Citroen has taken advantage of that extra length to deliver more space in the back seats. The Tiguan et al hardly do badly here, to be fair, but the C5 Aircross is truly gigantic in the back, with acres of head- and legroom.

The high seating position will make loading kids into child seats a doddle, too, and the phone-sized seat back pockets are a neat touch. It’s a bit of a shame, though, that Citroen has welched on providing USB sockets for rear-seat passengers to charge up their devices from.

That’s not the only disappointment in the back seats. Owners of the old C5 Aircross will be dismayed to note that they no longer offer the class-leading flexibility they did before, which was one of the car’s USPs.

Instead of three individual seats that fold and slide individually, allowing a multitude of setups depending on your requirements for carrying luggage and people, you now only get a conventional rear bench. This does split in a 40/20/40 format, and on higher-spec models the backrests recline, but there’s no sliding functionality, making this C5 Aircross a downgrade in terms of versatility.

Up front, the trend for space continues: it’s hard to imagine anyone finding the front seats of the C5 Aircross to be cramped. There’s lots of space for odds and ends, too, and the smart floating centre console design allows for a huge ‘chuck it all in there’ bin for your odds and ends, as well as a covered cubby beneath the armrest.

Again, though, it’s not perfect. For example, the placement of the cupholders beneath the floating touchscreen is odd, and makes it awkward for the driver to access them on the move. What’s more, while the driver’s seat offers plenty of adjustment, the squab is oddly short, which means taller drivers can feel like the backs of their knees aren’t well supported.

What's it like to drive?

The old C5 Aircross was renowned for offering a soft ride quality that was pretty good at smothering most bumps, but meant it leaned over quite a lot in corners. It feels as though Citroen has made a conscious effort to give this latest version slightly firmer suspension, with the aim of giving the C5 Aircross a better balance of road manners.

Has it worked? Well, yes and no. The new car doesn’t ride awfully, but it has lost that unctuous waft that made the old car feel different from its rivals. Bumps that cause side-to-side movement can make you feel tossed around inside the car, and shorter, sharper bumps cause the wheels to rattle around more, so the whole car feels jittery and unsettled. It calms down somewhat at motorway speeds, so long-distance schleps aren’t a chore, but it feels like a step down from the old car.

And the trouble is, there isn’t much of a payoff for this extra stiffness in bends. Yes, there’s more stability, but it’s hard to call the C5 Aircross fun. The steering is light and feels rather remote, and the front end isn’t all that eager to turn in, so the C5 Aircross isn’t really any more involving to drive than it was before. All in all, the changes means it simply feels more like any other middling family SUV, and less uniquely focused on comfort than it used to be.

You only get a choice of two engines: the entry-level option is a 1.2-litre petrol hybrid setup that’s half-way between a mild- and a full hybrid, with 142bhp to play with and a rather languorous 0-62mph time of 11.2 seconds.

Or you can choose a 192bhp plug-in hybrid that manages the 0-62mph sprint in a rather more sprightly 8.3 seconds, and should be able to manage around 40 miles of electric range in the real world from a full battery charge before the petrol engine has to take over.

We haven’t driven the latter engine, but we’ll let you know what it’s like as soon as we do. Mind you, Citroen doesn’t think it’ll sell all that many plug-in hybrid C5s, as most buyers who want a plug will choose the electric Citroen e-C5 Aircross instead, which we’ve covered in a separate review.

That leaves the basic hybrid which, as that 0-62mph figure suggests, isn’t sparkling to drive. It’s mostly OK at town speeds, but it does run out of puff on the motorway, especially on uphill climbs. What's more, we were driving the car one-up: with the whole family on board and a boot full of luggage, it might soon get frustrating.

And noisy, too. The three-cylinder petrol engine gets quite raucous when you push it hard – which you have to do quite a lot for the reasons mentioned above – and there’s a loud whine from the electric motor when you’re using regenerative braking.

The engine’s performance isn’t helped by the automatic gearbox, which you can’t help but feel spends a lot of time hunting through the gears, desperately searching for some power to use.

Technology, equipment & infotainment

The first thing you’ll probably notice when you climb into the C5 Aircross is the floating touchscreen, which flows off the dashboard and into the centre console as though it’s suspended in mid-air. It’s a neat design touch, and it’s just one of many in an interior that feels far more upmarket than you might expect for such a keenly priced car.

The gently curving dashboard, upholstered throughout its lower half, stretches across the car, topped off by a row of air vents and, where it’s fitted, ambient lighting. The effect is at once clean, modern and calming, and while there are some cheaper-feeling materials if you look hard enough, the majority are tactile and smart-looking.

The touchscreen itself is the biggest in any car made by Citroen’s parent group, Stellantis, and the huge amount of screen has been used wisely. Instead of trying to cram as many functions in as possible, Citroen has chosen a ‘less is more’ approach, keeping things simple and using large on-screen icons and readouts. As a result, this touchscreen is far less distracting than most, and accessing functions quickly is surprisingly easy.

The way the touchscreen flows into the centre console has a benefit for usability, too, as it means the lower half of the screen is always right where your left hand is, so there's no stretching to reach it.

This is especially salient as that’s where Citroen has put all the climate controls, in a section of the screen that’s hived off and permanently visible: together with those big, easy-to-use on-screen controls, that makes using it a doddle.

We’d still rather have physical buttons for the climate control, as they’d be even less distracting. But if these functions must be part of a touchscreen, this is the way to do it.

The good news is that the huge screen comes as standard on every version in the range. On top of this, the entry-level You! model gets 18-inch wheels, dual-zone climate control, keyless start, adaptive cruise control, automatic lights and wipers, and rear parking sensors. That level of kit is about par for the course, and probably enough to keep most family buyers happy.

Do keep in mind, though, that you don’t get lumbar adjustment for the driver’s seat, so if you value lower back support, you’ll want to upgrade to the Plus version. Doing so also gets you front parking sensors and a 180-degree reversing camera, as well as keyless entry, those reclining rear seat backrests, and ambient lighting.

You don’t get heated seats with this mid-range model, though, which is a disappointment given rivals like the Kia Sportage now offer them throughout the range. In the C5 Aircross, if you’d like to keep your hind quarters toasty, you’ll have to plump for the top-spec Max, which also includes a 360-degree parking camera, adaptive LED headlights, an electrically adjustable driver’s seat, a heated steering wheel, a powered boot lid, and a head-up display.

Citroen C5 Aircross running costs

With a starting price of just over £30,000, it’s impossible to see the C5 Aircross as anything other than a lot of car for your money.

For context, that’s the same price you’ll pay for an entry-level Kia Sportage, and the Sportage is a smaller car with less boot space. To get into a base-spec Volkswagen Tiguan, which offers a similarly-sized boot, you’d have to pay a whopping £8,000-odd more. That’s more than you’d pay for the top-of-the-range C5 Aircross Hybrid.

This is an affordable car to run, too. Fuel economy is good, and only really beaten in this class by ‘proper’ full hybrid cars that cost more to buy. Expect to see an average of around 40-45mpg in real-world, day-to-day driving, depending on how heavy your right foot is.

And where some of its rivals stray close to the £40,000 threshold for the ‘luxury car’ tax surcharge, the C5 Aircross’s low list prices mean it simply doesn’t. Even if you choose the top-spec Max model in plug-in hybrid form, there’s still more than £2,000-worth of headroom for you to add a few options without troubling the higher tax bracket.

Expect to have to service your C5 Aircross Hybrid every year or 16,000 miles, whichever crops up first. That mileage interval is pretty high compared with rivals, and it means if you’re a high-mileage driver, you’ll have to fork out for regular servicing less frequently to keep your warranty active (though to keep your car in the very best fettle, we’d always suggest an oil change at least every 10,000 miles).

Citroen C5 Aircross reliability

This generation of C5 Aircross is too new for us to have any reliability data on it yet. But it is possible to get an indication of how reliable it’ll be, both from looking at the previous generation car, which basically featured the same engines, and at Citroen’s reputation as a whole.

The old car did reasonably well in What Car?’s latest reliability survey, with the plug-in hybrid and mild hybrid models placing 23rd and 37th, respectively, in the Family SUV category, out of a total of 76 models to feature. Scores of 95.1% and 93.4% are pretty respectable, and suggest that if nothing else, the basic mechanicals in the new car should be durable.

That’s backed up by a strong showing for Citroen in the same survey. Along with sister-brand Peugeot, it really seems to have pulled its socks up reliability-wise in recent years, as attested to by a 10th-place finish in last year’s What Car? Survey: finishing one place behind Lexus and ahead of Hyundai and Mazda, all marques that are highly regarded for their dependability.

If you wanted further reassurance, it comes in the form of Citroen’s warranty. You get a three-year, 60,000-mile warranty as standard, which is par for the course, but you can also extend this warranty by taking your car to a Citroen main dealer for its servicing; do this, and you’ll get an additional year’s warranty each time, right up until the car is eight years old, or has covered 100,000 miles, whichever comes first.