Back in the early 2000s, Citroen was nothing more than a relic of what a great and forward-thinking company it used to be until about three decades ago. They had went from coming up with groundbreaking cars like the DS, CX or even the XM, to boring-looking econoboxes which looked like they were designed by half-blind people with Parkinson's disease - no offense to anyone. Comparing (in terms of design) a Citroen from the mid-nineties with one from the '60s and '70s is like comparing the F117 Stealth bomber with the Wright Brother's first flying creation.
After the second millennium started, something happened at Citroen. Most likely, the main force behind Citroen's image recovery consisted of two men. One was Donato Coco, who was Citroen's head of design for small cars from 1999 to 2005, when he jumped boats to Ferrari. The other guy was (and still somewhat is) Citroen's chief of design for all cars, Jean-Pierre Ploué. The first car from a new wave of "retro-modern" Citroens appeared in 2002 in the form of the Dyane-reminiscent Citroen C3.
Two years later, following a somewhat similar line of design, the C4 range was launched. Consisting of a five-door hatchback and a three-door Coupe, the C4 was the model that really brought Citroen back in business. The quirky-design business, that is. Although the five-door version kept some of the "normal-looking hatchback" proportions, the three-door Coupe was launched with a highly talked-about Kamm tail, making it look almost like the bastard child born out of a Citroen SM and a Toyota Prius unholy union.
Along with the C6 dreadnaught, the C4 Coupe is currently the most Citroenish-looking model in the Citroen line-up, so we decided to take its facelift version for a spin. Equipped with a 1.6-liter turbocharged unit jointly-developed by PSA and BMW, our test car was specced with almost every option available for the whole C4 range. Are the 150 horsepower developed by its engine enough to complement the car's hot-hatch looks? They should, especially since our test car was also painted in the red "Loeb" color. Read on to find out if that's true or not.
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