Category: Superminis 
Price Range: £10,440 to £14,045
Characterful design, versatile boot with Moduboard, roomy, easy and fun to drive, child-friendly features.
Plasticky, cheaply-textured cabin fittings, obstructive screen pillars, some reliability glitches.
A distinctive, well-designed but cheaply finished supermini.
Quality is the C3's downfall, thanks to a cabin constructed mainly of large, cheaply textured and less than substantial plastic mouldings. That said, panel gaps are even, and squeaks and rattles are well-contained - and at least the knobbly textured surfaces don't try to hide their plastic origins. Owners have suffered a series of general quality defects, as well as more serious reliability problems, reporting problems with ignition, ECUs, fuel injection, electrical and electronic issues, faulty SensoDrive gearboxes and leaking doors, tailgates and windows. At this stage in the range's life, though, the C3 should be better de-bugged with most teething troubles sorted.
Latest Readers' Drives About the Citroen C3
wrote on 11 10 2007
wrote on 10 09 2006