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Citroen C4 PureTech 130 – long-term review - Report No:4

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Citroen C4 PureTech 130 – long-term review - Report No:4 | Top Gear

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As per usual for a modern car, our French crossover's cabin is too clever for its own good

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Citroen C4 PureTech 130 – long-term review - Report No:4

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As per usual for a modern car, our French crossover's cabin is too clever for its own good

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Citroen C4 PureTech 130 – long-term review - Report No:4

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As per usual for a modern car, our French crossover's cabin is too clever for its own good

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The C4’s exterior boasts many, many corners and curves and angles. On the inside, however, the designers have gone in very much the opposite direction.

In what I’m fairly sure is a deliberate aesthetic/ergonomic decision rather than ‘spent so much time adding bits to the exterior that we ran out of time to do the cabin’, the C4’s dash sits proudly upright, straight, vertical, slabbish: no wraparound cockpit here.

Because I am becoming an old git who is more excited by dash architecture than sick turbo lag, I have been enjoying the effect this slab-dash creates, making the C4’s interior feel open and airy rather than cocooning its front seat occupants. All in keeping with a car that’s about relaxation rather than exhilaration.

However, it does create one minor drawback, for me at least: if I’m sitting in my regular driving position, I can’t actually reach the central touchscreen.

This is mostly because I am a strangely shaped human being, with disproportionately tiny arms for my height, like a small, fat, T-rex.

Overcoming this can’t-reach-the-screen hurdle isn’t exactly taxing, requiring me to lean forward a few inches from the seat-back. As problems go, very much a first-world one. But at the same time, bit annoying, and not an issue I can remember encountering in any other car. Is it possible my… arms are getting shorter?

Luckily even those of us with vestigial forelimbs can avoid being boiled or frozen in the C4. In a welcome move, Citroen has extricated its climate control functions from the touchscreen, and onto a row of easily accessible physical buttons and dials below.

Not, however, all the climate control functions. It took me several weeks to figure out that it is possible to sync the AC zones, but that the button to do so lurks within the touchscreen, not on the row of dials. It’s a division of labour that doesn’t quite work for me: if you’re going to make your climate control stuff real, surely make it all real?

That said, every car company is wrestling with the touchscreen/actual-button dilemma right now, and I’m not sure any has got the balance quite right. For my money, the C4’s set-up is more coherent than the touchscreen nightmare of the Golf/Leon/ID3 cabin, albeit still plagued by a few sub-menu cul-de-sacs (culs-de-sac?), with too many frequently-used functions too many clicks away.

I’ve increasingly found myself plugging into Android Auto instead, which is better integrated and more useable here than in any car I’ve tried before. Unfortunately even this solution requires me being able to reach the main screen. Off to the stretching rack for me and my tiny T-rex arms…

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The C4’s exterior boasts many, many corners and curves and angles. On the inside, however, the designers have gone in very much the opposite direction.

In what I’m fairly sure is a deliberate aesthetic/ergonomic decision rather than ‘spent so much time adding bits to the exterior that we ran out of time to do the cabin’, the C4’s dash sits proudly upright, straight, vertical, slabbish: no wraparound cockpit here.

Because I am becoming an old git who is more excited by dash architecture than sick turbo lag, I have been enjoying the effect this slab-dash creates, making the C4’s interior feel open and airy rather than cocooning its front seat occupants. All in keeping with a car that’s about relaxation rather than exhilaration.

However, it does create one minor drawback, for me at least: if I’m sitting in my regular driving position, I can’t actually reach the central touchscreen.

This is mostly because I am a strangely shaped human being, with disproportionately tiny arms for my height, like a small, fat, T-rex.

Overcoming this can’t-reach-the-screen hurdle isn’t exactly taxing, requiring me to lean forward a few inches from the seat-back. As problems go, very much a first-world one. But at the same time, bit annoying, and not an issue I can remember encountering in any other car. Is it possible my… arms are getting shorter?

Luckily even those of us with vestigial forelimbs can avoid being boiled or frozen in the C4. In a welcome move, Citroen has extricated its climate control functions from the touchscreen, and onto a row of easily accessible physical buttons and dials below.

Not, however, all the climate control functions. It took me several weeks to figure out that it is possible to sync the AC zones, but that the button to do so lurks within the touchscreen, not on the row of dials. It’s a division of labour that doesn’t quite work for me: if you’re going to make your climate control stuff real, surely make it all real?

That said, every car company is wrestling with the touchscreen/actual-button dilemma right now, and I’m not sure any has got the balance quite right. For my money, the C4’s set-up is more coherent than the touchscreen nightmare of the Golf/Leon/ID3 cabin, albeit still plagued by a few sub-menu cul-de-sacs (culs-de-sac?), with too many frequently-used functions too many clicks away.

I’ve increasingly found myself plugging into Android Auto instead, which is better integrated and more useable here than in any car I’ve tried before. Unfortunately even this solution requires me being able to reach the main screen. Off to the stretching rack for me and my tiny T-rex arms…

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Here are the problems with the new Citroen C4's tech-hungry interior

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As per usual for a modern car, our French crossover's cabin is too clever for its own good

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Here are the problems with the new Citroen C4's tech-hungry interior

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Citroen C4 PureTech 130 – long-term review