Citroen C4 'By Loeb' (2007) CAR review

Calling it C4 'by Loeb' makes it sounds like some sort of perfume. What's it for and did the world's greatest rally driver really have anything to do with it?

The C4 by Loeb (wouldn't 'Loeb edition' have sounded much less pretentious?) is a limited-edition C4 built to honour Sebastian Loeb's achievements in world rallying and Citröen's return to the WRC championship after a short break. As for the great man's involvment in the programme, it'd be nice to think that he toiled away for hours sorting out the damper settings and fighting with the engineers on our behalf for a proper haydraulic steering system. But what he probably did was get a bung in exchange for the use of his name. They asked me first of course but I wanted £15 and Citroen wouldn't do it. Apparently that's more than the company spends on a whole interior of a C4.

So what sets it apart from your common or garden C4 VTS?

Available only in either red or black, the C4 gets 17-inch rims in either white or grey, 'By Loeb' badging and an individual serial number to denote which of the 400 cars coming to the UK is yours. Inside, a mix of black and red leather and cloth brightens up the interior, there are Citröen chevrons embroidered onto the headrests and smatterings of chrome and aluminium on the dash and the pedals. Other than that it's stock C4. So it gets the still-cool steering wheel whose hub remains fixed as the rim turns and a stylish but ergonomically dodgy dashboard.