What is it?
"You are never wrong to do the right thing," said Mark Twain. Sure, abstract design can be hit or miss, but here, whichever side of that divide you fall on, you can't argue that the new Citroën C3’s avant-garde looks add some froth to a sea of samey superminis.
Old and new are literally welded together here, with the funky body sat on the PF1 platform of the previous C3. It’s been modified at the front to be kinder to pedestrians and toughened up around the B-pillars and front seat mountings to be kinder to you in a side impact. This, of course, adds weight, so the rest of the chassis has been lightened where possible, keeping the kerb weight roughly on a par with the outgoing model.
Instead of gunning for the Ford Fiesta’s crown of best-handling supermini, Citroën has gone back to its roots. The springs and dampers have been softened and more suspension travel added to aid ride comfort.
There’s new tech, too. The world’s first OEM dash cam is standard on this top-spec Flair trim, which records 30sec of video before and after an impact. Naturally, where there’s a camera there’s a social media opportunity, so you can also download an app that lets you take pictures and videos of your road trips, then share them with friends.
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the colour
This looks like a very
But thinking back to such recent everyday design classics as Uno, Punto 1, Megane 2 etc. I wonder whether the C3 designers are not trying a little bit too hard and will the C3 become a design classic in time?
Designers who come up with