The DS No. 8: 'Quite stylish, but if it snatched your phone you’d have a dickens of a time describing it to the police'

It’s easy to feel sorry for French presidents of late. I’m not talking about the constant strikes; resistance to raising the retirement age and lifting the cap on the 35-hour working week; the rise of the far-right and the radical-left; debt, immigration, Islamic terrorism, hi-viz-wrapped rioters, and wildfires. I’m talking about the official state cars they have to squeeze into the back of.

Governing the Fifth Republic is no easy task, made worse by some of the pretty awful motors seen parked outside the Élysée during the past half century. Poor Jacques Chirac suffered the brunt. His presidency (1995-2007) spanned the Citroën XM, the Renault Safrane and the Peugeot 607.

Things weren’t much better for François Mitterand, his predecessor, who did his best to maintain dignity in a Renault 25 and the particularly wretched Renault 30 hatchback. Imagine if Margaret Thatcher had been driven around in a mk1 Vauxhall Astra and you get the idea. It doesn’t exactly whisper ‘CEO of the nation’.

If you’re the premier of a country that doesn’t have a recognised car industry, the answer is simple: You get a Mercedes S-Class, specifically its armoured 680 Guard derivative. If you’re the Chancellor of Germany, the answer’s even simpler. If you’re the President of the USA, you get the 9,000kg Cadillac Beast, which is actually built on a truck chassis and maxes out at just 60mph. If you’re Vladimir Putin you get the Russian-built Aurus Senat limousine, which goes some way to explaining his anger management issues.

And if you’re one of our many recent Prime Ministers, you have a choice of Range Rover Sentinel or, if you insist on a saloon, the long-wheelbase Audi A8L. That’s because Jaguar haven’t built a saloon since 2019. The shame is not entirely France’s. I say stick Burnham in a Bentley, although if he had his way he’d probably be on a Lambretta.

Things started off pretty well for our Gallic chums. Before the Second World War, France was a leader in luxury automobiles. In the 1910s, the official car was the Panhard 20V, followed by the Renault 40CV in the 1920s, and in the 1930s les présidents had Renault’s Reinastella convertible and Nerva Grand Sport. After the war, President René Coty was chauffeured in Citroën’s iconic Traction Avant.

Charles de Gaulle followed him in 1959 by ushering in the Fifth Republic and the elegant Citroën DS, which became a big part of his image, mainly because it saved him from a hail of gunfire. Next, Georges Pompidou commissioned two special open top Citroën SM’s. This was peak avant-garde. And then, in the late 1970s, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing approved the Peugeot 604 and France could never be taken seriously as a superpower ever again.

France makes decent family cars. They’re not as stylish as the Italians do them, nor as well-built as the Germans, but they tend to be jolly and relatively cheap. What they have always struggled with since the 1970s is luxury, which is weird when you think Cartier, Chanel, Hermès, Dior and Louis Vuitton are [checks label], yep, definitely French. Every 10 years, Renault and Citroën will have another go, wheeling out the avant-garde tropes, never entirely convincingly. Nicolas Sarkozy, Chirac’s successor, had the quirky Renault Vel Satis and the handsome Citroën C6, but they were replaced by François Holland and the equally bloated and disappointing Renault Espace V.

So what of the current incumbent, Emmanuel Macron? His ride to the top table of western diplomacy has been SUV crossover-shaped, in the form of the DS 7 Crossback, the Renault Rafale, and the car I’ve been driving this week: the all-electric DS No.8.

Citroën have taken the name of the car with which De Gaulle escaped assassination, and made a whole new brand out of it. It’s pronounced ‘Day Ess’, and is a sort of Lexus to Citroën’s Toyota. The flagship’s name is No.8, which makes it sound like a perfume. I shall refer to it as the Numero Huit.

Is it a saloon, a hatchback, a fastback or an SUV? Everything, all at once! There’s a lot going on in the amalgamate design. A mix of lines, folds and strakes going in lots of different directions. In the flesh, the Numero Huit looks quite stylish, but if it snatched your phone you’d have a dickens of a time describing it to the police e-fitter.

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Inside, it’s smart but also quite eccentric, as if Jean-Paul Sartre were clad in Nappa leather and had eight speakers bolted onto him courtesy of French audio specialists Focal. The X-shaped steering wheel looks like it’s been liberated from a concept car. I tested the top-of-the-line Étoile spec Numero Huit with all-wheel-drive and a 97.2kWh long-range battery that’s good for 430 leisurely miles. The dual electric motors produce 350bhp. That’s more sensible than existential, but results in a respectable 0-62mph in 5.4 seconds. Top speed is 118mph — faster than Mr Trump’s obese Caddy, at least.

The emphasis is not on shifting, but wafting. This car is as smooth and silky as a Charvet shirt and tie (as worn by De Gaule, Mitterand, Pompidou and Macron), and yet the car I drove is £63,290. That’s pretty impressive for this amount of space and presidential refinement. It’s a budget Bentley. Bentley’s Flying Spur starts at £190k — and would cause the proletariat to dig out the guillotine. Whereas the Day Ess Numero Huit will save your neck, at least until the next union action grinds everything to a halt. And it will do so with more than a soupçon of French veuve.

So felicitations, Emmanuel, things in the Élysée car park stakes are finally looking up again.