Citroen C4 PureTech 130 – long-term review

“Ooh, it’s the new C4!” exclaims the cheery man in the vaccination centre car park. “I’ve just ordered one. What’s it like?”

I am a little taken aback, not least because it’s very rare to be presented with such a neat introduction to one of these articles. But also… 

“Did you not… test drive it first?” I ask.

“No!” he smiles. (At least I think he’s smiling. He’s wearing a mask.) “Saw the advert, liked how it looked, stuck in an order. Went for the electric one. Do you think I’ll like it?”

Now, I haven’t yet driven the all-electric e-C4. (Our test car, remember, is a three-cylinder petrol.) But I feel I can say with some certainty that: yes, yes he will like it.

Why? Because I’ve clocked up half a year in this petrol C4 without once mentioning its engine. And that’s because its engine is, in the very nicest way, entirely anonymous. Allied to the smooth eight-speed auto, it goes about its business in the neatest and most efficient of fashions: whisper-quiet yet responsive enough when you need a squirt of power. 

It’s exactly the powertrain you want in a car that’s all about soothing, stress-free relaxation. It’s also – and you may have spotted where I’m going here – a petrol powertrain doing a very good impression of an electric one. 

Assuming the Citroen engineers haven’t really Horlicksed things up, which I suspect they haven’t, electric should be the neatest of fits for the comfy, untaxing C4. Providing my newfound friend can live with e-C4’s less-than-class-leading 217-mile range, he will, I suspect, be most happy indeed with his new purchase.

However. A couple of days after this cheery chat, I make a CONTROVERSIAL C4 DISCOVERY.

While treating the C4 to a thorough vacuum, I remove the boot floor to find… another, lower boot floor. (This isn’t the controversial bit. I mean, why have one boot floor when you can have two?)

So I remove the second boot floor to discover, where you’d expect to find the spare wheel, a subwoofer instead. (This also isn’t the controversial bit. Many cars don’t bother with spare wheels nowadays, preferring the foam-and-fingers-crossed approach instead.)

Here’s the controversial bit. In addition to a subwoofer, the wheel-well also contains… quite a lot of water. Like, a generous mugful of the stuff. It’s been a rainy few weeks, and it looks like the water’s found its way through one of the seals around the rear hatch, and then pooled at the lowest point.

Some determined mopping with an old towel sorts the issue, and it looks like there’s been no lasting damage done. And I guess it demonstrates the C4 is impressively watertight at floor level, if not above.

Still, call me old-fashioned but: if you’re going to place a lump of electrical equipment in a well that’s susceptible to water ingress, Citroen, might you not want to consider a route through which that water can… egress? Pass the power-drill, I feel a Top Gear top fix coming on…