A Final Series
Today it's official. The Cactus has left the stage.Time to look back at a short 14 months of ownership. In all it's a fairly comfortable ride with its strength and weakness.
My Cactus was fitted with the highest trim level (shine) which meant it had sat nav, 16" Square gris rims, rear parking sensors and camera, privacy glass in the rear and things as daylight sensor with automatic lights and a rain sensor.
The engine was a 82 hp 3 cylinder engine with a 5-speed automated manual gearbox. This is not your traditional automatic gearbox but a manual gearbox that has been transformed into an automatic one.
The interior was in black and blue fabric to match the Blue Lagoon outside of the car. This is, in my opinion, one of the most fun colors for the C4 Cactus. In the beginning, My girlfriend and I where in doubt between Hello Yellow and Blue Lagoon.
The Cactus is really comfortable to drive. It knows how to filter out most of the bumps in city trafic. Because it's not that big (4157mm long, 1729mm wide and 1450 mm high) it's easy to manouvre in small city streets. Because it's fairly light (just 950 kg) it doesn't need a huge engine, making the 82 horsepower enough in daily traffic.
The ride height gives it a bit of a tough look, this also means that it can be used outside the normal roads. I've taken it into fields and dirt roads a couple of times and never got stuck or missed power.
In a car with a color this bright you never go through traffic unnoticed. Especially (young) kids seem to love this car. More then once I heared children telling their mum or dad how nice they thought this car is.
Regardless of the small outside dimensions it really is a spacious and practical car. With 1.87 meters I'm no giant but not small either. Still I could take place behind myself quite easily. With 358 liters the boot of the car also was large enough. With the rear seats down it even had 1170 liters of luggage space.
Then the downsides. Because of al the weight reduction they left out some soundproofing. This means that it is a bit noisy on higher speed. At motorway speeds (+/- 120 km/h) it's also a bit thirsty. You can definitly tell the tiny engine has to work hard to take it up to speed and keep it there.
Also the overal quality is what one might expect with a cheap family car. That being said, the dashboard is covered with grat material which looks and feels very nice. It's the door panels where you find plastic of the hard, cheap kind (that also scratches quite easy)
The gearbox is in my opinion the biggest downside of this car. If I where to do it all over I'd go for the manual gearbox. This robotised manual gearbox is just too slow in its respons. Also it sometimes choses to shift back or up in the worst possible moment. For instance it could go back to first gear just when you saw a small opening on a road you want to enter. meaning you had to wait a few seconds untill there was a connection between the engine and the wheels, just enough time for your opening to disappear.
It did prove to be reliable. In 31.000 kilometers the only thing outside normal maintenance was a worn out stability rod so nothing shocking there.
Finally a short summary:
+Great design, in and outside
+It does have the Fun factor
+Great drivability in the city and even offroad
+Practical
+Good fuel economy in the city
+High quality dashboard
-Noisy at speed
-Not economical at speed
-Terrible gearbox
-Cheap feel of some interior parts
A Final Series
Today it's official. The Cactus has left the stage.Time to look back at a short 14 months of ownership. In all it's a fairly comfortable ride with its strength and weakness.
My Cactus was fitted with the highest trim level (shine) which meant it had sat nav, 16" Square gris rims, rear parking sensors and camera, privacy glass in the rear and things as daylight sensor with automatic lights and a rain sensor.
The engine was a 82 hp 3 cylinder engine with a 5-speed automated manual gearbox. This is not your traditional automatic gearbox but a manual gearbox that has been transformed into an automatic one.
The interior was in black and blue fabric to match the Blue Lagoon outside of the car. This is, in my opinion, one of the most fun colors for the C4 Cactus. In the beginning, My girlfriend and I where in doubt between Hello Yellow and Blue Lagoon.
The Cactus is really comfortable to drive. It knows how to filter out most of the bumps in city trafic. Because it's not that big (4157mm long, 1729mm wide and 1450 mm high) it's easy to manouvre in small city streets. Because it's fairly light (just 950 kg) it doesn't need a huge engine, making the 82 horsepower enough in daily traffic.
The ride height gives it a bit of a tough look, this also means that it can be used outside the normal roads. I've taken it into fields and dirt roads a couple of times and never got stuck or missed power.
In a car with a color this bright you never go through traffic unnoticed. Especially (young) kids seem to love this car. More then once I heared children telling their mum or dad how nice they thought this car is.
Regardless of the small outside dimensions it really is a spacious and practical car. With 1.87 meters I'm no giant but not small either. Still I could take place behind myself quite easily. With 358 liters the boot of the car also was large enough. With the rear seats down it even had 1170 liters of luggage space.
Then the downsides. Because of al the weight reduction they left out some soundproofing. This means that it is a bit noisy on higher speed. At motorway speeds (+/- 120 km/h) it's also a bit thirsty. You can definitly tell the tiny engine has to work hard to take it up to speed and keep it there.
Also the overal quality is what one might expect with a cheap family car. That being said, the dashboard is covered with grat material which looks and feels very nice. It's the door panels where you find plastic of the hard, cheap kind (that also scratches quite easy)
The gearbox is in my opinion the biggest downside of this car. If I where to do it all over I'd go for the manual gearbox. This robotised manual gearbox is just too slow in its respons. Also it sometimes choses to shift back or up in the worst possible moment. For instance it could go back to first gear just when you saw a small opening on a road you want to enter. meaning you had to wait a few seconds untill there was a connection between the engine and the wheels, just enough time for your opening to disappear.
It did prove to be reliable. In 31.000 kilometers the only thing outside normal maintenance was a worn out stability rod so nothing shocking there.
Finally a short summary:
+Great design, in and outside
+It does have the Fun factor
+Great drivability in the city and even offroad
+Practical
+Good fuel economy in the city
+High quality dashboard
-Noisy at speed
-Not economical at speed
-Terrible gearbox
-Cheap feel of some interior parts