DS 4 Review (2022-present)

On outright boot space the new DS 4 hatchback trumps its competitors, with more volume available than any of its premium German rivals and more even than more mainstream competitors like the Volkswagen Golf and Mazda 3.

The trouble is, the practicality picture isn’t quite so rosy further forward. The rear seats are especially cramped, with a narrow roof that impinges on head room, intrusive door panels that bang into your elbows, and a dearth of knee room that’ll cause you problems if you’re tall (or sitting behind someone who is). The overall impression is one of finding yourself within a very finely trimmed sarcophagus.

In the front seats the news is better – you aren’t quite so hemmed in – although the narrow windows and a roofline that’s close to your head do lend the DS 4 an impression of snugness that you won’t find in a BMW 1 Series.

There’s a sense here that DS’s engineers have sought comfort over and above driving enjoyment, and that’s a good thing. However, around town, the ride is just a shade too taut, and there’s a lot of side-to-side joggliness, which means you really notice the car rocking about over bumps and ruts that only affect one side of the car or the other.

For all that, once you get the speed up a bit the DS 4 mellows out considerably, which means it’s quite relaxed on the motorway, an impression that’s aided by impressive damping of wind-, engine- and road noise.

We haven’t driven the pure petrol powertrain yet, but the hybrid setup (badged E-Tense) is particularly smooth and quiet. Plug-in systems like the one fitted to the 4 can often feel a little jerky and indecisive when you prod the throttle, but this one is about as slick as they come, with reasonably seamless juggling of the electric motor and petrol power, and it feels powerful, too. This adds to the 4’s impression of unflappability.

Mind you, if you enjoy a spirited drive on a back road, you might find the 4 isn’t all that great a companion for such a thing. There’s lots of grip and the nose follows your steering inputs faithfully, but the complete lack of feedback you get through the steering wheel or the chassis means you never really feel all that involved in the process.

There’s a lot of high-tech whizziness going on in the 4’s cockpit. For example, the big 10-inch touchscreen infotainment display comes with a separate, smaller one - known as Smart Touch - that allows you access to certain custom shortcuts. There’s a 7-inch digital dashboard screen, too, which is standard on every version, and a big head-up display on all but the base model. Most versions get USB ports in the front and back of the car, too, which is handy.

The DS 4 line-up is a little confusing at first glance, but it’s more easily managed if you splice it into three groups. The core range consists of three trim levels: Bastille+, Trocadero and Rivoli, in ascending order of poshness.

Then there are the sportier DS 4 Performance Line and Performance Line+ specs, the latter the more generously equipped. Finally, the DS 4 Cross models (Trocadero and Rivoli, again: there’s no Bastille+ here, though) deliver crossover-esque styling cues in the form of black body add-ons and roof bars. Given the Cross shares the standard ride height with the other versions, it doesn’t offer any extra off-road ability, although you can add an advanced traction control system for dealing with low-grip surfaces for an extra cost.

Equipment lists are generally high on tech, which is good, and on the whole the 4 is better equipped than its rivals, but there are a couple of glaring omissions. Firstly, heated seats aren’t available as standard on any specification except the limited-run (and very pricey) ‘La Premiere’, and if you want to add them to any other version, they only come as part of a costly optional package. What’s more, only the top models get adaptive cruise control, despite it being standard on every version of the Volkswagen Golf.

One thing you do get as standard on every model, though, is an automatic gearbox, which is worth keeping in mind when comparing the 4 with premium hatchback rivals, most of which make you pay extra for an auto.

Indeed, the most fuel efficient DS 4 of all will be the diesel model. You can bank on an average of 50-55mpg in day-to-day use, depending on the type of driving you do, which will be well above and beyond the 40-45mpg you should see from the identically powerful petrol model. Even then, both of these figures tend to at least equal or better the 4’s best competitors: this is a pretty economical car.

Choose a more powerful petrol version instead, and as you might expect, fuel economy drops off congruently, although whether it’s the 178bhp or the 222bhp version you opt for, you should still see somewhere approaching 35mpg on average.

The plug-in hybrid’s real-world fuel economy is harder to predict, as it relies wholly on how much you plug it in: you might as well completely ignore the official WLTP mpg figures, as these flatter plug-in hybrids to the point of being completely unrealistic. If you keep it charged up and only ever use electric power, you won’t use any fuel at all. On the other hand, if you never do so and allow the car to try and charge itself up off the petrol engine, your fuel economy probably won’t stretch much beyond 30-35mpg. Having said that, compared with similar plug-in rivals, its economy figures are on the pace.

We don’t yet have any reliability data on the DS 4 itself. It’s simply too new, and DS as a manufacturer doesn’t sell enough cars to make it into the reliability surveys we use to help us get an idea of a car’s dependability.

What we can do is get a (very) rough idea of the 4’s reliability by looking at manufacturers from the same group, who use the same components in their cars, those being Peugeot and Citroen.

Citroen came 11th in the What Car? Reliability Survey, but Peugeot came equal 22nd, out of 30 manufacturers included. Mind you, neither manufacturer did particularly well in the 2021 Driver Power survey, with only three Peugeot models finishing within the top 75 cars in the survey, and no Citroens.

The DS 4 comes with a three-year, 60,000-mile warranty, and this is about the bare minimum you’d expect in the industry these days, although, to be fair, it’s the same as you’ll get in most of its premium rivals. Keep in mind, however, that more mainstream models like the Kia Ceed and Toyota Corolla are available with much longer warranties, so if reliability is a key concern, one of those alternatives might be a better bet.