DS 9 review

At first this all seems very familiar from the DS 7 Crossback. But that’s not exactly unusual in this class of car – a BMW 5 Series has a very similar cabin to, say, a BMW X5. 

It’s much less businesslike than any of the German rivals inside, and that alone makes it more welcoming. The DS 9 cabin feels like a Tesla concept car, just from the 1970s: somehow minimalist and kitsch all at the same time. Insist your fleet manager bumps you up to the ‘Opera’ spec upholstery, enveloping you in rich-feeling, expensive-smelling Nappa leather instead of the incongruously sporty Alcantara. 

While cousin-brand Peugeot is allowed to be the maddest of the French brands and go crazy with its shrunken steering wheel, mad graphics and multi-deck dashboard surfacing, DS likes things a little more reserved inside. 

You look through the steering wheel to read your speed, not over it. Ergo, the driving position is better sorted. Oh, and that steering wheel itself? Hand-stitched, that is. Each one takes 45 minutes. The ‘pearl’ stitching motif on the doors has taken three years of R&D to perfect. 

There are no heater controls. That’s a sub-menu in the touchscreen, which is familiar Peugeot-Citroen fare, and could do with a graphical and processor update to be the state-of-the-art centrepiece this cockpit deserves.

Below said screen are shortcut keys for the menus. Above lie vents, and the weird rotating B.R.M timepiece that DS is so fond of. It rotates in and out of view when you press the oddly sited starter button just below... every time you enter and exit the 9. It’s a slightly bizarre gimmick, but also one of the only true examples of old-school madness that exist in this new-age French luxmobile. So, it falls just on the right side of ‘the charming/annoying’ see-saw.

Based on a stretched version of the platform that brought you Peugeot’s stunning but cramped 508, the 2900mm wheelbase carves out plenty of space for grown-ups front and rear. The long glasshouse gives the cabin an airier ambiance than you might expect, while the boot is a competitive size and pleasingly features a hidden stowage cubby for the E-Tense’s charging cables beneath the floor.