By
EWAN KENNEDY
17 April 2006
Citroen was one of the early runners in the turbo-diesel sales race
in Australia. Introducing the C5 with a diesel engine almost five years
ago, long before many other makers made their move. Though, to give them
due credit, Mercedes and Peugeot have had turbo-diesel variants in
Australia for periods that make even Citroen seem like a babe in arms.
The Citroen C5 diesel did pretty well on
the sales front, but wasn’t the cheapest of vehicles and we had to
make do with relatively old engine technology because of the poor
quality of Australian diesel fuel at that time.
Now we’ve got the good diesel fuel and
Citroen has introduced a new high-tech engine in the C4. The C4 HDi
engine is a relatively small unit at only 1.6 litres, Citroen avoiding
the big-engined sports-diesel market that seems to have afflicted many
other marques.
It’s hard to dispute Citroen's argument
that people buy diesel engines to save fuel, money and the environment,
not to drag race other cars away from the traffic lights.
Having said that, Citroen does have an
interesting feature in its engine that permits the turbocharger to
overboost for up to 90 seconds so you have extra grunt for safer
overtaking in tight spots. This overboost lifts the maximum torque from
an already useful 240 Newton metres to 260 Nm.
Outstanding fuel economy is the result of
this sensible engine setup. During our time with the C4 HDi its fuel
consumption routinely sat around the mid-fives in suburban driving, and
this dropped to the low four litres per hundred kilometres in easy
motorway running. Thus 1000 km from the 60-litre tank can be achieved
with fuel to spare.
On the other hand, at $29,990 you pay
$4000 more to buy the 1.6-litre C4 HDi than for a C4 petrol, with an
engine of the same size in a car with an identical level of equipment.
The petrol engine has the same power, though substantially less torque,
than the diesel.
And Australian oil companies still
persist in charging considerably more for diesel fuel than petrol,
despite the fact that diesel is cheaper to produce.
The Citroen diesel engine is well
sound-proofed, being almost totally encapsulated on all sides as well as
top and bottom. From outside the C4 HDi at idle the distinctive rattle
leaves no doubt that it’s a diesel, but from inside you are hard
pressed to say how it is powered.
We much prefer a manual gearbox in a car
in this class, but there are some who simply won’t buy a C4 HDi
because it isn’t offered with the option of an automatic transmission.
On the road the Citroen C4 turbo-diesel
has excellent steering feel and reacts precisely to the driver’s
needs. The suspension soaks up irregularities in Australian backroads in
a most impressive manner.
The fixed-hub steering wheel (the hub
remains stationary whilst the steering wheel revolves behind it) works
beautifully. The hub has controls for the audio system, trip computer,
cruise control with inbuilt speed limiter, and some ventilation items.
These controls are always in the same location because they don’t move
with the wheel.
The primary reason for the fixed-hub
design is that the airbag always comes out at the same angle so has a
non-symmetrical shape for optimum protection.
Citroen C4’s use of no fewer than four
LCD screens in the dashboard is a bit of an overkill and can be tiresome
at night. Thankfully there's the option of turning some of them off.
There's a lot of common sense thinking in
this mid-sized C4 HDi from Citroen and anyone considering joining the
turbo-diesel revolution should certainly add it to their short list.
