Test Drive: CITROEN C4 Coupe 1.6i VTR - 2009 - "New Cars Collection"

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.

Jean-Pierre Ploué and Donato Coco pretty much know their stuff. Both were on Citroen's design payroll when the C4 Coupe was launched back in 2004. While Jean-Pierre Ploué was the head of design for the whole Citroen brand – and now for the whole of the PSA Group - it was Donato Coco who penned the compact hatchback's retro-futuristic lines. Most of the exterior design harks back to the Citroens of the golden era but with a modern touch of French je ne sais quoi.

Sir May B. Bach's Opinion

You guys can officially color me disgusted. The man who designed this... ahem... abomination, that Coco guy, should be flown to the Amazon jungles where he should get bitten by some... ahem... godforsaken dinosaur bird with rabies or something, catch an exotic flu which has no cure and die a horrible pain.
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Normally, we're not fans of dashboard instruments disposed right on top of the center console instead of their usual spot behind the steering wheel. Well, especially since Citroen was one of the first car makers in the modern era to bring back this awful feature, we don't like it on the C4 Coupe either. Other than that, our test car's interior was nice and quite futuristic actually, especially considering the class it's being part of.

3D Interior Panorama

>> Click to view the interior panorama

Living with the C4 Coupe 1.6i VTR in the city is quite a "Parissiene" experience. Sure, you won't exactly turn into someone who has trouble pronouncing "R's" correctly and sips caffe lattes with his pinky finger high in the air. You will, however, experience the French way of making cars.

Mary's Opinion

Without getting into too many juicy details, I can honestly say this is the car in which I had the most fun in all the test drives so far. I'm not sure if you guys are familiar with the hidden "lady friend" option under the front seat. Are you? By mistake I found out that if you cross over the markings on the road without using the turn signal a gentle vibrator will caress your tooshie in a somewhat loving matter.
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Although just by looking at it you might be inclined to think the Citroen C4 Coupe has a pretty stiff and responsive suspension, you'd be half-wrong. At low to medium speeds, the car feels and acts like a large sail boat. Every swift change of direction and/or hard braking makes the car roll from side to side or dive forward like it has no shock absorbers. While this doesn't sound to be very safe, the comfort of the suspension is top notch.

Lou Cheeka's Opinion

Oh man, this is hard. When I was younger and living in Eastern Europe I really had a huge crush on French cars and on Citroen in particular. There was just something quirky and... kinky, I might add, about those old Citroens with pneumatic suspension. A neighbor of mine had late-model CX as a daily beater and I remember lurking it in the dude's parking lot.
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Keeping quite a lot in common with other, “softer” Citroens, the C4 Coupe benefits from a very comfortable ride. As we mentioned earlier, at low and medium speeds the softness of the suspension can become quite a bit frustrating, since every harder-than-average braking maneuver can result in the whole car diving forward and downward like cattle after being lassoed by a pickup driver by the name of Lou Cheeka.

On the plus side, even if equipped with 17-inch alloys engulfed in Michelin rubber with low tire walls, the car maintains its composure even on rougher roads or over speed-bumps. Only larger-than-usual potholes are truly felt in by your kidneys.

To complement the somewhat soft suspension settings, the seats are among the softest we've encountered. The side bolster support was average, but the softness was very, almost TOO Citroen like. The closest thing to resemble that would be a comfortable and cuddly leather couch made for rich hippies or Rastafarians.

As for the other comfort-inducing amenities present on our test car, we might as well add the dual-zone climate control and the three-stage heated seats which, naturally, we didn't get to actually test since technically it's still summer. Another comfortable feature resided in the panoramic glass sunroof, which delivers quite a nice atmosphere inside the cabin and almost makes you think you're driving a very quiet convertible. For the audiophiles out there, our car was also equipped with a pretty capable hi fi sound system from JBL.

To make a long story short, the Citroen C4 Coupe is one of the most comfortable compact hatchbacks we've ever driven, giving an impression of a much larger cars in this aspect. Until we have a go at its C5 and/or C6 big brothers equipped with pneumatic suspension, we can honestly say this is the most comfortable Citroen we rode in the past few years.

The main piece of engineering in the Citroen C4 Coupe we tested is without a doubt the 1.6-liter turbocharged mill situated right behind the chevron grill. Born from a loving but unexpectedly short marriage between the PSA Group and BMW, the same engine can be found under the Cooper S and John Cooper Works versions of the Mini, slightly tweaked for better performance, obviously.

First of all, a powerplant co-designed by an engine specialist like BMW couldn't be the worst thing to find under the hood of a car which looks fast even when standing still, could it? Second of all, apart from being rather powerful for its displacement, the 1.6-liter four banger is also very fuel efficient for the amount of horsepower it delivers. With 150 horsepower and a maximum of 240 Nm (177 lb ft) of torque available on tap from as low as 1400 rpm all the way to 3500 rpm, this is engine represents downsizing at its best. 

After being pressurized by a somewhat of a LPT (Low Pressure Turbocharger) the air meets the fuel and then it gets delivered to each of the four cylinders via an electronically-controlled direct injection system. Therefore, the power/fuel consumption ratio is a very good one. Both performance and fuel economy are also a bit influenced by the six-speed manual gearbox, which behaved flawlessly during our test drive.

On the downside, although we're willing to bet absolutely none of its customers will ever notice this from their rides, the Citroen C4 is based on platform which is... wait for it... 18 years old! Of course, not many things were kept from the original Citroen ZX donor car, but the basic architecture remains.

The PSA Group has had quite a few number of cars which are based on this antique platform, thus making the C4 share some of its underpinnings with the Xsara and the ZX from Citroen and with the 308, 307 and 306 from Peugeot. On the good side, this could only mean that any "childhood diseases" for this platform have long been fixed. Second, trust us, there's nothing "antique" looking about the C4 Coupe.

Since it was launched back in 2004, the Citroen C4 duo (five-door and three-door Coupe) has had a whole series of very well done commercials where one of the two cars was rapidly transforming into a giant robot. Those commercial's tag line was "Alive with technology". While not many people took that ad literally, including us, the C4 Coupe we tested was pretty much the epitome of the commercial.

The "Lane Departure Warning System" takes care of the car's passenger by alerting the driver via a gentle – albeit a bit unexpected – vibration in the seat whenever the marking line on the road is crossed without using the turn signals. That feature alone should keep our very own Mary occupied rapidly switching between lanes on the highway.

Our test car was also equipped with light and rain sensors for the headlights and the windshield wipers, consequently. We have expressed our opinion on these two options before, so we won't do it again. Plus, it's better to have them then not to.

A very nice feature resided in the HID headlights with a directional function, thus making night driving much safer. Interestingly, this futuristic feature was also part of the Citroen DS array of options in the late 1960s. Another interesting gadget – especially for all the ladies out there - is the automatic perfume dispenser, a feature for which you can pay thousands if you check it on a Maybach option list. Sadly, we didn't get to try it out since the one in our test car was empty of perfume.

Other than the gadgets already mentioned, probably the most eye-catchy is the fixed-hub steering wheel. Having quite a button-cluttered appearance, the center hub can be used by the driver to control quite an impressive array of functions around the car, including the very helpful and responsive cruise control system. Except when turning the wheel, obviously, since the buttons always remain in the same spot, while your hands don't. To top it all off, our car was also equipped with a satellite navigation system that stores maps on mini SD cards. Pretty fancy for a compact hatch, huh?

Although among car companies in France Renault pretty much holds the monopoly on the number of models with a five-star EuroNCAP rating, Citroen is not that far behind either. The three-door Coupe version of the C4, meaning the one we drove, wasn't tested by EuroNCAP, but the five-door one was. Considering both variants share over 90 percent of parts between them, it's safe (pun intended) to say that we drove one of the safest compact hatches around.

With a pretty vigorous safety cell and intelligently-designed crumple zones, the C4 can really hold its own in a crash with a similarly-sized vehicle. Two dual stage airbags, seat mounted side airbags and two curtains airbags that spread from the front to the rear are there to protect you in the standard trim level.

Belt pre-tensioners and load limiters are also available in standard. If the aforementioned aren't enough to convince everyone that this is a safe compact, learn that our test car was also fitted with your regular anti-lock braking system but also with electronic stability control, two systems that are certainly braking (pun intended, again) any over-optimistic driver in bad weather and/or driving conditions.

After five days spent with the facelift-ed Citroen C4 Coupe VTR 1.6i we can honestly say that its main selling point is probably the engine. A technological marvel in itself, the 1.6-liter mill uses a rather low amount of fuel while providing some pretty spectacular (for its displacement) performance figures. Too bad it had to take some BMW know-how in order for the engine to be created so it wasn't designed completely in-house, but the result is rather spectacular. Although it's not exactly new, the petite turbocharged mill is equipped with the latest technologies in gasoline engines and it clearly doesn't disappoint.

We're not sure if this is correctly enunciated as "the bad part" about the car we drove, but here we go anyway. The worst part about the Citroen C4 Coupe is probably its country of origin. We know there are numerous Citroen fans out there who may not enjoy this part of our conclusion. Sadly, there are also numerous detractors of the brand, who appeared especially in recent years. More and more people are beginning to criticize the reliability of French cars in general and Citroen cars in particular. Comparing reliability studies in recent years would somewhat contradict that, but the talk is still getting around, which translates into nothing but poor resale values and less trust in the brand.

The ugly bit about the C4 Coupe we tested is most likely its design. It's definitely not downright ugly, as Sir Bach says, but it's definitely not beautiful either. The perfect way to describe its design would be controversial. You either love it or you hate it, there's not much of a middle line. Especially when you look at that "backwards" rear, also known as a "Kammback" or a Kamm-tail.