Citroen C1 Review 2023

With its ultra-low-cost approach both in terms of purchase price and running costs, the C1 makes a strong case for itself as a first car, whether for you or a family member. The entry-level Touch model is very cheap and feels a little stripped out, but it doesn’t cost much more to upgrade and give the Citroen C1 the modern features most buyers will want. It also would make a handy second car if you need a small and inexpensive runaround for occasional short journeys when a big car is unnecessary or undesirable.

The Citroen C1 doesn’t feel quite as solid or sophisticated as the Skoda Citigo and SEAT Mii rivals, but it is a little cheaper than those models and should be just as reliable too.

You can’t ignore the Citroen C1’s relatives - the Toyota Aygo and Peugeot 108 - which drive in a very similar manner and are mainly differentiated by cost and looks, but either would be a good choice.

The SEAT Mii and Skoda Citigo are Volkswagen Group spin-offs of the Volkswagen Up, and bring the solid engineering and efficiency you usually get, just with a smaller price tag than the Volkswagen version. Smart-looking and good to drive, both the Mii and Citigo are attractive options.

The Hyundai i10 is also a strong contender, and although the cheapest model is some way from the cheapest C1, it brings a quality feel and good specification.

The Citroen C1’s cabin is never going to give Audi designers sleepless nights, but given the modest sticker price you might find the fit and finish a welcome surprise. Go for the basic Touch model and it’s a little more obvious that this is a car built down to a price, but the rest of the range benefits from smarter seat fabrics and more colour throughout the cabin that helps lift the mood. 

Clever touches all contribute to the positive vibes, like the way the body-coloured metal is incorporated into the doors as a design feature rather than simply saving a few Euros. 

The materials used inside the Citroen C1 are designed to be hard-wearing rather than particularly plush, but the mix of colours and textures means it doesn’t feel like a solid lump of dark plastic, and it’s clearly put together well. The whole car is designed to be lightweight but it never feels insubstantial, which is good news if you plan to hang on to it for a few years.

Plump for the lowest possible list price and your Citroen C1 Touch comes with the most humble of audio systems, amounting to an AM/FM radio with a USB input and two speakers. Technically that’s enough to get by on but it’s hardly the stuff of dreams. Given that it is designed to be a low-cost model there was no option to upgrade either.

Meanwhile, the rest of the Citroen C1 range gets the far smarter 7-inch touchscreen that is well-loaded with desirable features for not a great deal more cash. It comes with DAB, USB input, an extra pair of speakers to give you four in total and controls on the steering wheel. It’s designed to work hand-in-hand with smartphones too; there’s Bluetooth for hands-free calling and streaming, plus Mirror Screen so you can operate certain functions on your phone directly through the car.

It works well too - the screen feels tough and has a slightly matte finish which bodes well for thousands of miles of prodding fingers, while it’s easy to navigate through the screens and it rarely suffers from lag. You can also download specific apps that work as navigation if you don’t want to use the native apps on your smartphone.

The dimensions of the Citroen C1 are 3.4m in length and 1.6m wide, making it one of the smallest cars you can buy and perfect for city duties. No one buys a city car expecting to carry a family of seven plus luggage across Europe, but there’s no point buying one if it’s too small to accommodate adult humans. As expected it’s those up front who get the best deal - big doors on the three-door version mean a massive aperture to climb through and it’s easy to get installed. 

Even getting into the rear seats is almost as easy on the three-door as it is on the five-door, so there’s a strong case for choosing the cheaper option depending on your needs.

Up front there is plenty of space to accommodate tall adults, with good legroom and plenty of headroom thanks to the relatively tall body. Elbow room is a little less plentiful, but unless both you and your passenger are bouncers or are particularly fond of 1980s fashion it shouldn’t be a problem. 

It less impressive when you step into the Citroen C1's rear seats, with legroom in particular lacking for adults and even older children. Even if you just have small children in the rear, add in the bulk of a car seat and you’ll find them putting their feet up on the back of the front seats in no time. Headroom is acceptable in the rear although it’s not quite as generous as in front. 

As for storage space, the Citroen C1 offers 196 litres and like most cars in this class the boot tends to be relatively narrow but deep, which can be restrictive depending on what kind of cargo you want to carry. That’s over 50 litres fewer than the SEAT Mii and Hyundai i10, but it is more than the almost-identical Toyota Aygo. Drop the rear seats and you have 780 litres to play with. 

Storage in the cabin is acceptable too, with a decent glovebox but relatively slim door pockets - hardly a surprise given the car is quite narrow. Overall the Citroen C1 is pretty much par for the course in terms of space efficiency - you won’t get much more space by going elsewhere.

Following the discontinuation of the larger 1.2-litre engine, the Citroen C1 is limited to the single option of a 1.0-litre, three-cylinder unit dishing out a heady 72PS and 93Nm of torque. That doesn’t sound like - and isn’t - much, but it weighs as little as 840kg (about half the weight of a BMW 5 Series) so it doesn’t have to pull too much, as long as it’s not loaded up with people and luggage. More importantly, like many three-cylinder units it is smoother and more characterful than similarly-sized four-cylinder offerings: it’s keen to rev and feels willing, however unrealistic your acceleration demands might be.

The Citroen C1 is in its element in the city, where it can get away from the traffic lights smartly and is sufficiently quick to keep up with urban traffic. Out on quicker country roads or the motorway you may need a little more patience, but wind it all the way up and it will do 99mph - more than enough to get you in trouble.

The standard five-speed manual gearbox won’t cause you any problems either. It has a lightweight feel when you change gears and the ratios are well-chosen to give decent acceleration without running out of puff at higher speeds. The Citroen C1 was offered with an automated manual gearbox on a limited number of models, but it's best avoided.

For a car of this size, the Citroen C1 does a fine job of keeping your ears and your sanity intact. For starters, that three-cylinder engine does create a little bit of noise when you start to exercise it, but it’s a pleasing sound rather than a cacophonous one and will rarely bother you or your passengers - impressive for one so small.

The same goes for wind and tyre noise levels. Skinny tyres certainly help, and although the Citroen  C1 hasn’t got the space to pack in lots of sound deadening, you don’t feel like the last biscuit in the tin. Wind noise picks up a little when you get to motorway speeds but the same goes for most of its rivals, and in truth this will likely be an occasional occurrence rather than being a frequent motorway hack. 

The front seats, in particular, offer decent support even on longer journeys, but the rear seats are best left to the kids or for short hops. Further pluses for the cabin environment are the air conditioning and audio system, both of which do their bit to make you feel like you’re in a bigger car.

The Citroen C1 was last tested by EuroNCAP in 2014, where it scored an impressive four stars out of five. It achieved an 80 per cent rating for both adult and child protection, a strong score for a car of this size, although it did less well on pedestrian impact at 62 per cent and 56 per cent on safety assist, although the latter would be improved with the addition of the Active City Brake pack.

One of the ways in which the Citroen C1’s sticker price is kept so low is the careful selection of standard equipment. All C1 models are fitted with six airbags, a low tyre pressure warning system and ESP as standard, while Flair models add to that a speed limiter. C1s also come with ISOFIX child seat mounting points and a space-saver spare wheel.

Active City Brake was available as an option, which also incorporates a lane departure warning system and traffic sign recognition, which is useful if you can find a car with it fitted. Top-spec Flair models are also fitted with a reversing camera, and it was possible to add rear parking sensors although arguably they're not necessary on a car this size.

All versions of the C1 are rated group 8E, which is one of the lowest insurance groups of any car, so you can expect your premium to be about as low as it can go. This is another reason why the Citroen C1 is so popular as a first car, and insurers can look favourably on buying something new (or newish) because they are more likely to be fitted with key safety features like ESP. The Citroen C1 also makes sense if you are a bit older and just need a runaround - your premium might end up being smaller than your fuel bill.

With the recent changes in VED and CO2 ratings, the C1 has suffered a little here. Previously it was rated at under 99g/km which meant zero road tax, but it has now moved up a band and so you can expect to pay £165 per year for most models. If the thought of buying an older car instead of nearly-new doesn’t bother you it is possible to cut this cost - for example, most pre-March 2017 Citroen C1s are in the old band A, which attracts zero VED.

The basic Citroen C1 Touch model doesn't come with much - you get a USB input for the two-speaker stereo and electric front windows, so you can be sure that travelling in a Touch will be far from a luxurious experience.

Much more appealing is the Citroen C1 Feel model, which nets you not only desirable stuff like air conditioning and that feature-packed infotainment system, but also things like the bigger 15-inch wheels that help the ride and handling, the height-adjustable driver’s seat and the smarter trim which helps to lift the cabin. We think it’s the best value in the range.

The Citroen C1 Flair model adds a reversing camera, 15-inch alloy wheels, electrically heated and adjustable door mirrors and some chrome trim, which is also good value but not all of it is absolutely essential. The Airscape models add a full-length fabric sunroof for something close to a convertible feel, but will be more expensive and harder to find.