Turn This Citroën’s Steering Wheel and the Middle Stays Exactly Where It Was

The first-generation Citroën C4 used a steering wheel with a rotating rim and a fixed central section. Keeping the centre stationary meant its controls stayed upright and allowed an airbag designed around a consistent deployment orientation.

Watch someone turn the wheel in an early Citroën C4 and something looks wrong for a moment. The rim moves through their hands, but the middle seems to have been left behind.

The badge stays upright. So do the buttons.

It is an odd thing to notice because most drivers have spent years accepting that everything attached to a steering wheel rotates with it. Citroën questioned that arrangement when developing the C4, working with safety supplier Autoliv on a fixed-hub design introduced in 2004.

The most interesting reason was hidden beneath the centre cover.

A conventional steering-wheel airbag turns with the wheel. It therefore needs to accommodate different rotational positions when it deploys. By keeping the airbag module stationary, the C4’s designers gained more freedom to shape the cushion for the areas of the driver it was intended to protect. Autoliv identified that consistent orientation as a central advantage of the system. 

That is a more substantial explanation than “Citroën liked doing things differently,” although the result certainly looked the part.

The controls benefited from staying put, too. With an ordinary wheel, a button that begins beside a thumb can end up somewhere else during a turn. The C4’s central controls retained their positions as the rim moved around them. Owners still needed to learn the layout, but at least the layout did not rotate.

A familiar job, rearranged

From the driver’s seat, the important distinction was simple: the part held to steer still turned. The stationary centre did not mean the car lacked a mechanical steering connection or that steering commands had become an electronic experiment.

It changed the relationship between the wheel’s rim and the equipment inside it.

Autoliv’s launch announcement also described an electrical benefit. Keeping the central equipment fixed removed the need for its connections to accommodate continual rotation. The supplier said Citroën used the available design freedom to place as many as 21 controls on the C4’s wheel. 

Whether that many controls felt convenient would depend partly on the person using them. A fixed position makes a button easier to locate once learned; it cannot make a crowded arrangement instantly familiar.

The design remains worth seeing in motion. A still photograph shows an unusual steering wheel, but misses the detail that made it distinctive. Turn the rim and the centre’s refusal to follow suddenly explains the whole idea.