With the increasing diversification of the new car market, finding a hitherto untapped niche is no easy thing.
But the Citroën C4 Cactus – which is not a Citroen C4 (we’ll come to that in a moment) and bears little resemblance to a real cactus – is no easy thing to define. The Cactus is such a new thing that the short of the history is this: revealed at the Geneva motor show in March 2014 and on sale for four years, with a somewhat major restyle in 2018.
There was also a C-Cactus concept — although it didn’t look much like this — in 2007, and before that there have been Citroëns with elements of the Cactus about them.
If you’re looking for inspiration that is affordable and practical, gives a loping drive and is unpretentious, the obvious source material is the 2CV. The Cactus isn’t a successor to that, but it is closer than most.
If there’s anything Cactus-like about the car, it’s the Citroën's most notable design feature: the soft pads on its flanks. They are, in some manner, like a Cactus’s spikes in that they’re a defence mechanism, but they visually differentiate the Cactus from the pack, too.
