Even if you aren't entirely convinced by the Citroën C4 Cactus’s styling – although to us, it seems easy to like – you’ll forgive the car largely because it has so obviously been designed from the inside out.
You get an unmistakable sense of that from the driver’s seat, which is wide and comfortable for such a small car. Head and elbow room are generous and there’s great forward visibility.
The fascia in front of you is low and, rather than looking sparse or bare, has plenty of interesting design features and ritzy touches to occupy your attention.
In some ways, it’s bold in its simplicity; aside from one line of buttons atop the centre stack, functional operation of the car is confined to two LCD screens, a steering wheel, a handbrake and three pedals.
There really isn’t much else to concern or distract you; heating and ventilation settings and the like are all controlled via a central seven-inch colour touchscreen. Unless you’re looking for distraction – at which point you’ll find the designer luggage-inspired interior door handles and glovebox.
There’s a handy little shelf perfectly proportioned for your smartphone, large door bins and a large, convenient button by your right knee to activate the child locks for the back doors. Pragmatic inclusions like this abound.
Likewise, motorbike-inspired consoles, removable multi-storey storage boxes and other gimmicky features of the kind offered in other crossover superminis are notable by their absence. Although you don’t expect soft-touch mouldings throughout for a starting price of just under £13k, it’s disappointing to find such hard, scratchy plastics on the less showy parts of the interior.
