The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
Comfort mindset sees Citroen Cactus shed its quirky look
In a market full of family hatchbacks determined to become SUVS, it’s rather refreshing to find a product with the opposite perspective.
Citroen’s C4 Cactus started out in 2014 as the brand’s offering to buyers in search of a compact crossover. Now, as my family and I have been finding, it’s re-invented itself as a more conventional family hatchback, but one with a rather unique perspective on life.
If you’re at all familiar with the way the Citroen model line-up has developed recently, the reason for this change of product emphasis becomes fairly clear.
By the time of this evolved C4 Cactus model’s introduction in early 2018, the brand had launched two compact SUVS – the C3 Aircross and the C5 Aircross – so no longer needed this Cactus to appeal to the crossover crowd.
So the cheerful, quirky demeanour that marked out the original Cactus model needed to mature a little. The huge side-mounted ‘Airbump’ panels that characterised that earlier design represented a fun touch for crossover buyers but risked looking merely silly on a product repositioned to appeal to more conventional folk.
To please these people, this Citroen needed to offer a core attribute with a little more substance – and does. “Comfort”, the advertising around this car proclaims, “is the new cool.”
Perhaps. It’s certainly a virtue that used to characterise this Gallic brand in the days of legendary models like the Traction Avant, the 2CV and the DS.
In more recent times, when Citroens became little more than re-badged Peugeots, that selling point was sacrificed, but the company’s resurrecting it now with its so-called Advanced Comfort programme.
In the C4 Cactus, this delivers super-supportive Advanced Comfort seats that I’ve decided I really like. And a clever new suspension system using what the marque calls Progressive Hydraulic Cushions. This really does helps on the appalling tarmac that characterises roads in my vicinity.