Citroen C4 review

The C4 fundamentally drives exactly as you expect it will. There are no particular surprises here – it’s more refined than Citroens were in the firm’s cheap ‘n’ cheerful era of discounts and fleet sales, which is nice. It offers a comfortable, composed ride that holds things together as long as you don’t try and get a bit greedy for speed. Then it all starts to get a bit wobbly and flustered, particularly in the all-electric versions.

But is it actually comfortable?

It’s easy to get cynical about the marketing and PR efforts of carmakers, who try to convince us that theirs is the best on the market. But the C4 actually manages to be (almost) as comfortable as the French manufacturer would have us believe.

The new seats are hardly racing buckets, but they offer a little more lateral support than before to keep you upright while still being supremely wide and soft. The suspension smothers cracks in the road and larger obstacles like speed bumps with aplomb too. The dampers have double hydraulic stops up front and single at the rear, which means the C4 can be more softly sprung compared to rivals because the hydraulic bumpstops stiffen up and dissipate the energy in the event of a bigger hit. Clever.

We’ve driven the facelifted hatch and funky fastback X in both hybrid and electric forms (although only the most powerful versions of each), and all really are very comfortable when you’re pottering about town. We’d argue that the e-C4 and e-C4 X could do with a slightly firmer setup for better body control though: the extra weight (over 200kg vs the hybrid) means they both suffer from a bounce and a wallowyness that isn’t there in the hybrids.

What if you’re really in a rush?

If you're in a hurry that’s when the C4 really starts to fall apart, no matter which powertrain you’ve gone for. In everyday driving the hybrid lets you run on electric power surprisingly often, and the handover to petrol is really quite smooth too, but the more you ask of it the more the little three-cylinder protests and the more frustrating the rather slow and dim-witted gearbox becomes. Heck, even the little electric motor makes quite a racket.

What’s it like in corners?

Let’s put it this way, we hope you like body roll. The C4 really does prioritise comfort, but that means you get quite a bit of movement if you really chuck it into a corner. The hybrid powertrains are lighter so they’re slightly more composed than the EVs, but all have supremely light steering and brake pedals that lack feel. A WRC throwback this is not.

Are the electric ones fast in a straight line, at least?

Erm, not exactly. All will top out at just 93mph, and the 134bhp versions with the smaller battery take 10.0 seconds to reach 62mph from a standstill. The more powerful 154bhp motor brings that down to 9.3 seconds for the e-C4 X and 9.2 seconds for the e-C4, but both still feel a little sluggish from a standing start.

Perhaps that's to aid the efficiency, of which there is lots. In mixed driving you can expect to pull between 3.0 and 4.0mi/kWh from the bigger-batteried eC4, equating to well over 200 miles of range in warm conditions. Still down on the WLTP number, but that's true of virtually every EV ever.

It’ll rapid charge at speeds of up to 100kW to get juice back in, and if you’ve got excess then a V2L adaptor is available to power your kettle when camping. Can’t beat an al fresco cup of tea.

And the hybrid?

Citroen reckons its mild hybrid application provides a 20 per cent improvement in fuel economy, and both the 99bhp and 134bhp iterations claim between 51.1 and 62.1mpg, with 107g/km of CO2 emissions. Not bad, although we only just topped 40mpg on a mixed run.