Citroen C4

REPORT 3

£26,605 OTR/£27,200 as tested/£321pcm

WHY IT’S HERE

Is this the comfiest family car you can buy?

DRIVER

Sam Philip

EVEN AFTER A COUPLE OF MONTHS BEHIND THE WHEEL, I WAS struggling to get a handle on the exact size of the new C4. Not that I’d been scraping the wing mirrors against width restrictors and reversing into bollards. But the C4’s – how to put this? – unorthodox visuals do make it tricky to neatly pigeonhole, dimension-wise.

Time to crank out the trusty TG tape measure, and see how the Citroen squares up to its nearest rivals. First up, the new Vauxhall Mokka. Both sit on the same PSA platform, but the C4 clocks in considerably larger, boasting an extra 18cm in the wheelbase and 21cm of overall length, plus a dollop more bootspace. Prices start just £20 north of the Vauxhall, and though list prices don’t always tell the whole story, they’re a handy indicator, in this case indicating the C4 looks like fair value on a pound-per-pound basis.

Even more so when you weigh the C4 up against its closest conceptual rival, the Toyota CH-R. The pair are virtually identical in size, but check this out. While you can have a C4 for just over 21 grand, the cheapest C-HR costs nearly... 28 thousand pounds.

In fact, the C4 appears good value compared to pretty much all its rivals, both regular hatchback and crossover. You can pick up a new one cheaper than any Ford Focus, Nissan Qashqai, Skoda Octavia or Mazda CX-30 – all of which are similarly sized, give or take.

And I know you’re looking at the ‘as tested’ price as the top of this page, and thinking, “27 grand for a mid-size Citroen with a 1.0-litre engine? Doesn’t exactly scream ‘bargain of the century’...” but here’s the thing. New cars are expensive. And the C4 is (slightly) less expensive than many.