05 Sep 06
Inevitably this C4 has grown relative to its Xsara-based predecessor: it's now 4.59m long (just 2cm shorter than the big C8), 1.83m wide (that's six feet) and 1.66m high (lower-slung than the C8), and Citroen claims class-leading elbow room. Boot space behind the deployed rear seats is hardly a family's-worth but neither is it a token gesture. And the seat-folding mechanism itself is a fine example of simplicity and space-saving.
The centre and rear seats all fold flat into the floor to make a low and level load bay. And access to the rearmost row is simplicity itself: pull a handle on a middle-row outer seat, and the cushion springs up. Then you can slide the ensemble forward to meet the back of the front seat and create an easy path to the back.
With the cushion flipped up you can also create a load area for tall objects, but the centre seat doesn't perform the same trick so you can't use this feature to load a bike crossways as you might in a Honda Jazz or Civic. Citroen has missed a trick here, but at least the seats slide and recline in usual MPV fashion. The rearmost seats are commodious enough for relatively compact adults, too: 'They do not make you feel punished,' said project leader Gilles Caulliez.
At the aft end, the rear window can be opened separately from the main hatch, which cuts far into the roof to make a big load aperture, and there's a pull-out luggage blind whose rear edge can be anchored either at window level or at floor level to create a covered zone of triangular cross-section.
