Citroën announced the production end for the C1 city car, following a stint of 17 years and around 1.2 million units sold, leaving the automaker without representation in the A-Segment.
According to the French automaker, the decision was taken due to the “new mobility challenges” faced by the micro city-car segment, alongside the “major shift in terms of traffic conditions in cities and the acceleration of the energy transition”. The truth is that strict emission regulations and high safety standards of modern cars have made it hard for automakers to offer an affordable ICE-powered model in the smaller segments.
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The first generation of the Citroën C1 was introduced in 2005 as a sibling model to the Peugeot 107 and the Toyota Aygo, sharing the same chassis, engine, interior, and most part of their exterior. The trio got facelifted in 2009 and then again in 2012, before giving way to the significantly updated second-generation in 2014. In 2018, PSA Group and Toyota announced they would be ending the joint car production at the Kolin factory in the Czech Republic at the end of their model’s lifecycle.
Citroën and Peugeot, now members of the wider Stellantis family, decided not to develop a new generation of gasoline-powered A-Segment vehicles. Toyota decided to go at it on its own, recently launching the all-new Aygo X, which is based on their TNGA-B platform. Although the A-segment is shrinking, we shouldn’t rule out a future return of the French city cars in fully electric form, since they could be sharing Stellantis underpinnings with the next generation of the Fiat Panda.
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Despite the rumors, Citroën said there are no plans for an immediate successor – at least in the short term. The French automaker hopes that city car buyers will opt for either the tiny Ami electric quadricycle, or the larger and more practical C3 supermini, with both serving as indirect replacements for the C1.
To make the existing C3 more attractive to customers, Citroën is offering a new and more competitively priced variant, called “You!”, priced from £12,995 in the UK. This makes the C3 cheaper than the outgoing C1 Flair, even though it is a larger car with more generous standard equipment including air-condition, heated mirrors, cruise control, lane departure warning, fog lamps, etc.
