THINKING OF YOU(some text hidden)

By Jonathan Crouch

Ten Second Review word count: 46

Many thought the Citroen brand had given up on really affordable small cars. But then along comes this one, the C3 You, at the time of this test costing just £14,000, vastly less than any other C3 - or any other mainstream-brand supermini come to that.

Background word count: 164

Not many auto makers offer tiny city cars any more. Citroen is one of those manufacturers who've only recently exited the segment (in 2022 with the C1), partly because by the end, that car had become priced almost at supermini levels (the next class up), so there wasn't much reason not to buy a supermini. Perhaps one like Citroen C3. But that'd be a fair bit more expensive wouldn't it? Well this one isn't. Welcome to the C3 You. If the French maker had been able to keep this cut-price C3 derivative at the same pricing level it was when originally launched in Spring 2022 (£12,995), we'd be talking here about parity with the cheapest Dacia Sandero for the title of Britain's cheapest new car. Even as it is, tested a year on priced at almost thousand pounds more than that, this C3 could still be considered a best buy on price if you take equipment into account. Let's see what you get here.

Driving Experience word count: 260

As you'd expect, the You comes with the most basic possible powertrain and transmission combo, a naturally aspirated 82bhp 1.2-litre three cylinder petrol engine mated to a five-speed manual gearbox. This doesn't provide quite the driveability that you'd get from the rival Dacia Sandero's little turbocharged unit, but if you're prepared to give your left arm a workout with the stick shifter, acceptably hurried progress can be managed on the rare occasions it might be necessary. 0-62mph takes 12.5s en route to 103mph. Soft damping disguises the old PF1 platform's ultimate lack of sophistication and it's this approach you'll feel almost immediately when you set off on your test drive. Rather refreshingly, no attempt has been made here to provide a dynamic Fiesta-style driving experience. Instead, the suspension has more compliance than you'll find with rival superminis and the result is that things like potholes and sleeping policemen will bother you far less than they usually would. It's almost enough for small but subtle changes to the way you go about driving. In this C3, you don't have to anticipate and avoid poorly-surfaced stretches of road; you simple drive over them as if they didn't really exist. The downside to this is predictable; extra body lean through the corners. There's certainly more of that than you get in obvious rivals and when you're dealing with this, it doesn't help that there isn't a great deal of feedback from the steering. Stay with it though and you'll find that there's actually more grip and traction on offer than you might think.