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RPM TV Website | March 26, 2024

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One-day Test: Citroën New C1

New Citroën C1 New Citroën C1 New Citroën C1
Adam Schoeman

Small cars were not always the tight rope walking premium yet compact things that they are today. Not so long ago the desire to drive a small car was mistaken for the financial inability to drive a bigger car, which meant you didn’t get useful kit like airbags, or ABS brakes (I’m looking at you Citi Golf).

Later on those become standard but the stigma around those little city crawlers remained, because why would you not want something bigger, and for that smaller cars, while safer, were not pretty.

I once overheard someone saying something in this era that perfectly summed it up: “You don’t want to drive a small car, you end up driving a smaller car.”

That was sort of true until the Citroën C1 and its sister car the Peugeot 107 arrived on the market.

They were not small but microscopic in size, but damn they were cool! The interior had exposed metal panels that were the same colour as the exterior, meaning that electric blue colour also doubled up as accents in the cabin.

It had some style, and its compact form factor added to that. It had five-doors so it was practical and under the hood beat one of the earliest three-cylinder 1,0-litre motors, like before it become cool to have a small capacity three-cylinder engine. If you gave it gas the little motor had enough shove to move the light body to fun-having speeds, and to also be extremely frugal when needed.

To me these cars kick started the small car craze, so it is extra-interesting that I am driving a new Citroën C1 today.

New Citroën C1

New Citroën C1

It was always going to be difficult to follow a car that was so successful; just ask Peugeot about the 205 GTI and how it took them three more generations to get back to that level of engagement. But on the outset Citroën have realised this and decided to just go wild.

The new styling is aggressively trendy, with slanted thin headlights, and vertical day-time running lights and a larger round light. In essence it looks like a C4 Picasso’s nose but a little squashed but in my opinion every bit as cool as its older brother.

It also has a rolling fabric roof which acts as a big sun roof or pseudo convertible. Its pretty but not that practical if you drive faster than 80km/h as it was engineered for beauty not wind noise reduction.

Behind one of the four-doors is an interior that has grown up considerably. A 7” touch screen adorns the dashboard and links to your smartphone and there is even climate control on offer.

The interior has kept the accents, but this time it is not the body panels shining through, but rather actual accent panels. This means that there are infinitely more colour choices than before, since you can actually chose a colour that isn’t the same as the outside.

New Citroën C1

New Citroën C1

A three-cylinder engine is once again under the bonnet but this time its a 1,2-litre model and is, if you believe the press material, brand new from the ground up. It doesn’t feel brand new though, in fact I would have put money on it being the exact same engine as the previous C1. Performance wise it isn’t going to set any records with 60 W of power, but with a claimed consumption rate of 4.3L/100km it is still very frugal.

This new C1 is in a lot of ways ver y similar to the old C1, adding more equipment and style to the familiar and well developed package. So job well done then? Not quite, because you can still buy the older C1 from Citroën alongside the new C1, and that is because the new C1 is quite a lot more expensive. The older C1 will set you back R117,000 while the new C1 starts at R168,900 and that is a problem because R15,000 more gets you into a C3 which is a pretty quirky car in its own right.

The new C1 is a great package and it is easy to justify the increased price tag, but I have to feel that Citroën has decided to move it out of its old student-car stomping grounds and to instead position it as a premium mini-hatch. It has the credentials to back it up, but I am not too sure if it will enjoy the same amount of success as it did as before because of it.

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