► Month eight with our Citroen Cactus
► Touchscreen is clumsy and frustrating
► Interior lacks any driver enthusaism
Not, to my eye, that the Van der Graaf Cactus is going to promote a sudden upsurge in the fortunes of any ship yard near you in the immediate future, but, to paraphrase Rex Harrison’s resolutely un-sung sentiments in My Fair Lady, ‘I’ve grown… accustomed to its face.’
I’m unsure whether or not it’s down to designer Mike Lloyd’s determination to eschew all convex surfacing but, if you can get beyond the horse-pee-yellow couture, there is something indefinably yet fundamentally pleasing about the Cactus’s appearance. As with the first Bangle 7-series, it has, I suspect, much to do with delicious proportion desperate to throw off the shackles of hit-and-miss detailing. If only, for instance, the ‘Air Bump’ panel was less appliqué and more integrated in appearance.
Sadly, life on board does continue to elicit rather more exasperation than enthusiasm; the piecemeal exile of switchgear in favour of a catchall touchscreen, for example, a particularly deceitful purse-string-driven flattery which we fell for only as long as it took to discover that old-fashioned knobs and knockers are infinitely faster, easier and, let’s face it, more pleasing to get to grips with on the move.
Citroën is, of course, far from the only culprit in the context of this burgeoning, bung-it-all-on-the-wiring-loom fad. But it has here proved all too clearly that if you are going to ask your customers to embrace this approach to instrumentation, you’ve really got to get it absolutely, incredibly right.
Logbook: Citroen C4 Cactus Blue HDi 100 manual Flair
Price: £17,990
As tested: £19,330
Miles this month: 518
Total miles: 6593
Our mpg: 54.2
Official mpg: 83.1
Fuel this month: £45.71
Extra costs: £0
From the driving seat
+ Absence of switchgear promotes interesting design
+ Rear seats up and down like a hermit’s fist of late
– Clumsy touchscreen promotes disgraceful language
– Rear seat release mechanism awkward for one