DS 3 Crossback 2019 first drive

Several things to consider here: DS as a premium brand, the B-segment SUV as a thing, and the new DS 3 Crossback as the incumbent iteration of both. We might get more questions than answers, but we’ll worry about that later.

And so to the DS 3. I mean the new Crossback, not the old DS 3, the rather charming 3dr hatchback that in its warmer forms is rather good fun, and which plods along on sale for a short while longer. The DS 3 made the crossover (sorry) from being a Citroën to being badged as a DS, but the supermini won’t represent the brand for long, because DS is all about premium. 

PSA group, DS’s owner, knows: premium brands account for 11% of all worldwide car sales, it says, but 37% of profits. PSA – Peugeot, Citroen, Vauxhall/Opel, all distinctly not-premium in their various ways – would like a part of that action. And it’s not afraid to say it. It’s perhaps unusual for a company to declare it wants to sell into “70% of the premium profit pool in the world”. I mean, we know it’s all about the money, but you don’t have to remind us.

Anyway, the old DS 3 doesn’t fit very neatly into this profit pool (conventional small cars don’t) but as a small premium SUV thing, the new DS 3 Crossback very much does. The DS 3 Crossback is 4.17m long, 1.79m wide and 1.53m high, and weighs 1280kg, which means it competes with the Audi Q2 and Mini Countryman. 

It also means that it’s just 8cm longer and 6cm higher than a Ford Fiesta, yet because it’s a premium SUV the adverts look the same as the ones for perfume and it can cost as much as £35,000, even though it’s only got a 1.2-litre three-cylinder engine. Look, don’t ask me, I don’t make this stuff up.

Anyway, prices start at £21,550 for the 99bhp petrol you won’t buy because every month it’ll cost no less than the 129bhp petrol automatic we’ve tested, which starts at £24,550 (though you can add a couple of grand for the model in the pictures, which has some options on it).

The Crossback sits on PSA group’s new CMP platform, which I believe it’s obligatory to mention will also underpin the new Peugeot 208 and Vauxhall Corsa. The neat thing about CMP is that it’s primed for use with both internal combustion engines, of which the DS 3 has four options in the UK - 99bhp, 129bhp and 153bhp 1.2 petrols and a 99bhp 1.5 diesel – and as a pure battery electric vehicle, which will arrive at the end of this year. 

To my ears that suggests there’s inevitably some compromise in the platform,  because with an EV, surely it’s nice to be inventive with where you put the mechanicals to maximise interior space. 

But PSA’s logic is that, because both ICE cars and EVs roll down the same production line, it can be flexible about the proportions of each it builds, as the market demands. It’s a rather more pragmatic approach than nailing everything on a new EV platform, and not entirely un-sensible. Powertrain is a choice, then, not a philosophy.