Production of the Citroën C1 will soon cease after a market presence of 17 years and two generations. It leaves no substitute, so Citroën will leave segment A, and one wonders if the Citroën AMI will fill its void.
For a long time citroen has had cheap and small cars to move around the city, towns, surroundings… The list of predecessors of the Citroën C1 is long, we can mention as recent the AX, Saxo and C2, which were very similar in size and with a more or less spartan -less in the case of C2-.
But the Citroën C1 leaves no successor. Stellantis no longer sees the production of A-segment cars profitable, at least with conventional motorization, and Peugeot is going to do the same with the 108. As we told you a long time ago, the factory where they were produced together with the Toyota Aygo remains the Japanese brand to swell to sell the Aygo X Cross.
The agreement between PSA – Stellantis did not exist – and Toyota has its time, in June 2001 they agreed to manufacture small cars with minimal differences in a new factory in Kolin (Czech Republic). In December 2004 the trio of cars (C1, 107 and Aygo) was presented, on February 28, 2005 the pre-series began, and the great series since May 31 of that year.
First generation of Peugeot 107, Toyota Aygo and Citroën C1 (2004)
They were very basic cars for their time and of course if we compare them with a modern basic, but their price was below 10,000 euros in access versions. The only luxury was an auxiliary socket to connect an MP3 player to the radio, when having music on the mobile phone was not so popular and Bluetooth was carried by more expensive cars.
In the second generation, already in 2014, there was a profound renovation of the three ranges, although basic details of the platform had been maintained, such as the wheelbase, the engine mounts and other things that are not seen. On an aesthetic level, the three cousins differed quite a bitbut Toyota hit the key.
Since 2013 the Aygo has sold more than the C1 and the 107/108 -not the sum of both-, but the commercial approach has been consolidated as more successful. The Aygo has ended up becoming a best seller in the A segment, and both Citroën and Peugeot have let it die despite including 1.2 engines more powerful than the 1.0i, the only one mounted by Toyota. In 2019 the Aygo scratched 100,000 units.
Second generation Citroën C1 Airscape
Coming back to the present, we have the Citroën AMI, which is not even called a car, but a “mobility object”. It is a utility vehicle with quadricycle and moped homologation. It cannot exceed 45 km/h, it is electric, its power is much lower than that of an Aygo, it is smaller, its construction quality is inferior and it does not even have four seats. Yes, all finishes below 9,000 euros.
To save production costs to the extreme, the bodywork is perfectly symmetrical, the two doors are exactly the same (suicide left and normal right), it is manufactured in Morocco, its equipment is ultra-essential, it does not have a structure as resistant as a normal car , etc. No wonder they don’t refer to it as a “car.”
For a start, the Citroën AMI is a microcar, can be driven from adolescence with a moped license, and the C1 requires a normal driving license and 18 years. Its capacity is minimally similar to circulate around the city or from one small town to another, because the AMI cannot step on highways and on conventional roads it is very fair.
Citroën has managed to make the AMI so cheap that it is even cheaper than diesel-powered microcars in its class.
The “mobility object” is clearly cheaper in every respect, although the C1 is a very cheap car to maintain. The AMI is electric, it has very few things that can break it, its wheels are very small, fixing damage on a day-to-day basis will not cost much, cheaper to insure and tax… in this sense there is no discussion.
If Citroën wanted to put an electric utility vehicle on the street right now, it could not do so because of the little it asks for the AMI, nor for what it was asking for the C1. The closest thing that Stellantis has is the Fiat 500e and in Spain it costs 23,900 euros upwards. For that price one can buy a normal C1 and a C1 Airscape (convertible) at the same time.
Segment A is less and less competitive because the profit per unit is low, and Stellantis is going for more profitability per car. I am very afraid that the AMI will continue to be a vehicle with discreet sales (522-524 throughout 2021 in Spain) and meanwhile the C1s that Citroën stops selling will be transformed into sales for its competitors.