Citroen DS4 Racing / DS4 Sport planned for 2013

The Citroen DS4 Racing - arriving in 2013?

You would have expected Citroen to cash in rather more on their enormous world rally champion success. After all, that was surely the point of spending money on going racing in the first place. And Sebastian Loeb’s efforts over the years have stamped Citroen with the ‘Something Special’ badge.

But maybe for Citroen the glow of rally success was more important for the marque than attaching that glow to a specific model. But that may be about to change with news that Citroen are aiming to build a DS4 Racing Hybrid to sit one notch above the DS3 Racing and cash in on Loeb’s huge successes.

The Citroen DS4 Racing (or Citroen DS4 Sport, depending on who you talk to) will be a more than slightly warm hatch, and looks like it will have enough power to take on the Golf R and 2011 Focus ST, if not quite any future 2012 Focus RS.

Power will come from the ubiquitous PSA/MINI 1.6 litre petrol turbo sporting something around 200bhp. The clever bit comes from turning it in to a hybrid and bolting an electric motor with 95bhp to the back wheels, giving the DS4 Racing some proper shove and high grip from its hybrid 4WD setup.

For now this is close to the realms of speculation. But the success of the DS3 gave rise to the DS3 Racing and if the DS4 comes close to emulating that success you can be certain the DS4 Racing will turn up soon after. Auto Bild are reporting a source as saying the DS4 will arrive in 2013, two years after the DS4 arrives.

We’d put money on 2012.

By Cars UK