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By Jonathan Crouch

With this fourth generation C3 supermini, Citroen aims to reset segment value expectations. Jonathan Crouch takes a look.

Ten Second Reviewword count: 49

Thanks to a budget-designed 'Smart Car' platform, Citroen has been able to position this fourth generation C3 supermini firmly at the affordable end of the small hatch segment. You'll need to like the squarical looks and soft ride but if you do, it's difficult to ignore this French contender.

Backgroundword count: 163

The battle's on to fill the void in the supermini market left by the end of production of this segment's erstwhile best seller, Ford's Fiesta. The Stellantis Group conglomerate has three runners in this particular race; two are recently revised - the Fiesta's traditional arch-rival and segment sales leader Vauxhall's Corsa and the modern style icon that is Peugeot's 208. The Stellantis dark horse though, could be the car we look at here, Citroen's fourth generation C3. It's considerably cheaper than its cousins - and unlike them, it gets an all-new 'Smart Car' Stellantis platform that the group is ear-marking for models it wants to price low enough to compete with the budget brands. Sure enough, the cost competition here is less Corsa and 208 and more Suzuki Swift and Dacia Sandero. Unlike those latter two models though, you can also have this C3 in full-electric form and as a proper Hybrid as well as in conventional combustion guise. Sounds an interesting proposition.

Driving Experienceword count: 288

This C3 may cost considerably less than its Vauxhall Corsa and Peugeot 208 Stellantis cousins but it offers much the same choice of combustion engines. One is carried over from the previous generation model, a 1.2-litre Turbo 100 three cylinder unit mated to a six-speed manual gearbox. The other you might not be quite so familiar with - the Hybrid 110 e-DCS6 variant. This uses basically the same three cylinder engine but mates it to a 48V motor and a clever e-DCS6 dual clutch auto transmission with an integrated 28bhp electric motor. That motor claims to be able to power the car for up to half the time during urban travel. During deceleration in the Hybrid, the petrol engine stops and the e-motor acts as a generator to recharge the Hybrid system's 48V battery. The battery also stores the energy recuperated by the regenerative braking system. Hybrid folk won't much care about the 0-62mph time but for the record, it takes 9.8s (just under a second quicker than the Turbo 100 version) en route to the same modest maximum of 99mph. A greater Stellantis engineering difference comes with the electric E-C3 version, which gets a much smaller 44kWh battery than its E-208 and Corsa Electric cousins (though it's still supposed to be able to take you up to 199 miles). There's a feebler 111bhp electric motor too. One of the things that used to mark the previous generation C3 out from its supermini contemporaries was its soft ride. That's carried forward here - and embellished with 'comfort suspension' that features the 'Advanced Comfort' hydraulic bump stops we've seen in slightly larger Citroen hatches. As with the old MK3 C3, don't expect too much in terms of driver involvement.

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