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Standard equipment across the range includes 18” wheels, LED lights, Apple Car Play and Android Auto, Bluetooth, height adjustable front seats, automatic dual zone air conditioning, rear parking sensors, auto lights and wipers and heated and powered door mirrors. My test model was the mid-table Shine version with
prices starting from a still very reasonable £24,010, bringing a significant ramp up in the standard equipment stakes. Petrol power for the range comes from a 1.2-litre, 3-cylinder turbocharged unit in two power outputs, 129hp and 153hp. In my case the 129hp engine mated to a 6-speed manual gearbox. The first thing that strikes you about the Citroen
is refinement, even under hard acceleration, when 3-cylinders generally sound like an over excited lawnmower, the Citroen is remarkably quiet. It has a feeling of quality, not something that has always been a hallmark of Citroen’s past. A nice slick gearchange and well-chosen ratios
VW T-ROC VW T-ROC GETS ACTIVE I
t seems there is nothing but extremes in the colour palettes offered by car makers. Black, silver and grey at one end of the spectrum and luminescent greens, oranges and yellows at the other. For anything colourfully normal you can add a sometimes not insufficient amount of money to your options bill. My VW T-Roc came in Turmeric Yellow, which while mobilising some people to a less than flattering verbal outage of comment raised others to Everest-like levels of praise. As I said, extremes. The T-Roc’s spicy metallic paintwork weighs in at £635 on the optional extras list. Few would dispute how well the T-Roc drives, it has
all the refined smoothness one has come to expect from anything bearing the VW badge. The range starts at £24,185 for the Active model with 110 hp, 3-cylinder, 1.0-litre turbocharged petrol engine. Auto dimming rear view mirror, height adjustable front seats, auto wipers and lights, powered and heated door mirrors, climate, heated seats, adaptive cruise, Bluetooth and navigation all come as standard. That’s a pretty impressive list! There’s even a cabriolet version and a high performance R model with 4-wheel-drive and 300 hp. The test model was the aforementioned Active specification but powered by a larger 4-cylinder, 1.5-litre turbocharged petrol unit (£27,340). Mated to a 7-speed automatic transmission the 150 hp engine provides a top speed of 127 mph and the benchmark 60 mph is passed in a worthy 8.6 seconds. In this
means the C4 bowls along with little extra effort required from the driver, and it’s a comfortable place to be seated. It’s no hot hatch and you certainly won’t want to be hustling it along twisty roads, even though the famously comfortable Citroen suspension produces less body roll than you might imagine. It’s a very modern looking car with swooping lines, especially to the rear, but access and egress remains comfortable and most who saw my test car loved the looks. This is a car aimed at the family in my view, and it does a great job of providing practical, well -equipped transport at an affordable price. As with sister manufacturer Peugeot the quality has come on in leaps and bounds over the last few years, yet you do get a distinctly different car to any Peugeot stablemates. I loved the C4, it has distinct echoes of Citroen’s
quirky past but in a very useable, modern form and is a great value package.
SMART AND NOT OVERLY LARGE
boosted form the economy is still pretty decent being in the mid 40s mpg in combined driving. There’s plenty of space for the front seat occupants, and those in the rear will not feel cheated on legroom either. However, I found it disappointing that there is so much hard interior plastic i.e. cheap that detracts from the usual perception of VW quality. This even extends to the cloth panels on the front doors being replaced by all plastic on the rear doors. On the road the T-Roc handles well,
even by crossover standards it can be hustled along twisting cross country roads
quite happily. It feels a quality drive throughout with refinement and comfort. Smart and not overly large it’s a brilliant way of gaining that higher driving position without the drawbacks of a large SUV. Although very subjective the T-Roc is one of the best looking crossovers with an understated style that makes it both classy and classless.
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