2006 Citroen C1 Vibe 3 Door from UK and Ireland - Comments

Nothing.

What is it?

The Citroen C1 is a car jointly developed and produced by Toyota and the PSA group (Citroen & Peugeot). All the cars are built to Toyota's high standards, and as Toyota regularly come near the top of most owner satisfaction tests, that’s another plus.

The purpose of this car is cheap practical motoring with road tax at £40 per year, group 1 insurance, 61.9mpg combined. The car is also designed to need little in the way of maintenance due to its relative simplicity and ingenious design, such as chain driven cam belts (longer lasting, but slightly noisier than conventional rubber belts), and bumpers that can be removed with only two bolts.

The engine I chose was the 998cc 3 cyl petrol engine. This is the lightest internal combustion engine in any mass produced four seat car (it weighs in at 67kg). This engine also has Toyota’s VVTi (variable valve timing intelligent) engine management system. This is far more sophisticated than most VVT units as it can control not only when the valves open, but also how long they stay open for. This increases power and torque, and decreases fuel consumption.

Why I bought it?

I’ve been looking for a car that’s advanced where it counts (e.g. engine, chassis, gear box etc), and basic and simple where it can increase reliability and decrease weight (windup windows, no central locking, etc). And I believe that I’ve found that in this car.

For a car so small, it’s surprisingly safe (safer than many 4x4’s). It comes with ABS (advanced braking system) and EBD (electronic brake distribution), as well as a stability control system, so that all helps avoid an accident. But it’s also has seat belt pretensioners, two airbags (four with rhythm spec), isofix child seat mountings, and advanced crumple zones.

The car is also a good performer due to the low weight (790kg) and fairly high power and torque output at 68bhp and 69lb ft respectively. The official performance specifications are 13.7 seconds 0-62 and 98 mph, but many owners believe that the performance has been deliberately underestimated to keep the car in a low insurance group (Autocar Magazine recently did 0-62 in 11.2 seconds in a C1).

It’s also a good handling little car with rather stiff suspension. I was worried when I got the car that the EDB, ABS and stability control would be overly intrusive, but this isn’t the case. You can get away with some very creative driving before any electrical wizardry trys to saves the day.

The practicality is very good, with good front and rear leg/head room, but the boot space does suffer as a result in my opinion. It’s a shame that Citroen didn’t fit its module rear seats or Toyotas sliding bench seats, but they're easy to fold, and once down, there’s an impressive luggage area.

After a bit of haggling, I got the price down to £5245, and for that money I’m amazed by the build quality. Nearly everything feels solid and well fitted, especially the indicators and the solid thunk that the doors make when they're closed, but certain parts of the dashboard feel flimsy.

Things I don’t like:

On the three-door variant, the side rear windows are too small, so they make checking your blind spot a little difficult, but they made up for this by fitting very good wing mirrors.

The rear wiper is too small and this really does annoy, because the rear of the car is constantly dirty due to the stubbiness of the rear (cars that are flat at the back create a vacuum and suck up the dirt and water coming off the wheels).

Last, but not least, the lack of a glove box lid, but Citroen do sell one as an accessory for £29.95.

Economy:

I’ve only done a 1000 miles, but my average is 56.8 mpg, with a low of 46mpg and a high of 62.7mpg.

Carl Wyatt.

I have just purchased a c1 last week, part exchanged my jaguar 3.6 xjs for one. The ci is an amazing car, great design, great engine. The mpg is terrific, you can drive forever on a tank of fuel!I have the 4 door Vibe, the two back doors just blend in with the back of the car, very clever. just one minus point, the boot is very small, but overall the car is a winner!

Great review Carl. I've been considering replacing my ageing Corsa with an Aygo, C1 or Pug 107. The only things that have put me off are the limited hatch opening (I've stowed a fridge in my Corsa, for example!) and reports of the car being noisy / thrashy on motorways.

In reply to the 9th June comment.

Unfortunately the boot opening is more limiting than the load area itself, but with the seats down it surprising what will fit in the car. The cars motorway manor is rather refined, I recently drove an 300 mile round trip in this car mostly on the motorway at around 85 mph and although the engine makes a lovely, but noisy mini v6 noise when accelerating it then settles down the a distant humming once up to speed (below 85mph) and the economy wasn’t too badly effected at 51mpg. Thanks for the positive comment.

Carl Wyatt.

Carl.

Thanks for an excellent review, I'm convinced. But where did you find a C1 for that price?

Thanks.

Peter.

A quick update from the owner.

My C1 has now covered 5700 miles and has been totally reliable, I haven’t had one problem with it so far.

The fuel economy has remained around the 58mpg, but the performance has improved no end. It revs much more eagerly and feels as though it now has more power/torque. The gearbox has also loosened up nicely.

I have experimented with different fuels and I find that it runs best on Tescos super unleaded 99 octane. Surprisingly it ran better on normal unleaded than it did on Shell Optimax. I think this may be because Optimax has additives that help to improve older engines, but it’s definitely a noticeable difference.

I drove from Northamptonshire to Bodmin in Cornwall (280 miles) in the C1 and I was very impressed with its motorway manner, on the drive down I stayed at a constant 85mph and the car didn’t feel to stressed at these speeds. I did find that it got a bit fidgety and noisy above 90 though, and the fuel economy suffered as a result.

For the drive home I decided to drive at night and try to find the optimum economy, so I hovered around the 55/60 mph area and stopped only once for coffee. When I worked out the economy, I got 69.8 mpg with the radio and heater on with my camping gear in the back (still a long way from 85.5mpg see http://jcwinnie.biz/wordpress/?p=990).

All in all I’m very happy with this car and the only real annoyance it still the rear wiper.

My brother has the same car and I thought it was superb to drive-great fun and bags of character! See Auto Express magazine's comparison to the C2 this week-very interesting!

The rear wash wipe is tiny, but it looks easy enough to swap the whole arm and wiper to a larger one, as the screen is large enough not to catch the end of the wiper. Maybe the dealers could advise on this-perhaps a C3 arm/wiper will fit?

Just bear in mind that the glass hatch lifting piston may be overcome with any increase in weight and may not stay up!

What a lovely car though, and a great choice-it's fun, nippy, full of character, with a superb sounding engine.

At last, a small car that is rewarding to drive, cheap to run, tax and insure, and sympathetic to the environment too.

I'm so sold on it that I may even get one myself!

I bought the Aygo basic & I'm very impressed, £ 5995.00, £40 tax, cheapest insurance, good performance, I've driven a lot of cars and my best comparison is the old BMC Mini,

998cc perky engine, the handling is good, especially around corners (if you don't back off the throttle)

much wider interior than it appears

the only faults IMHO...

3dr blind spot at b pillar

small tail gate

wipers (f & R)

car handles better than slippery seats << (_._) >>

diesel version fuel economy close to petrol economy (£1000 dearer)

All in all if your going to buy a small car try the city bug's first,

Sledgehammer.

We bought a new C1 3dr vibe last december, trading in an old proton with no mot & falling to bits using the citreon £300 px deal and £800 discount package, great little car returning 55 mpg. What else can you get for under 6k with toyota build quality and funky looks.

For me our C1 is a real successor for my old 1100cc Mini: Maximum agility and fun for lowest price and fuel consumption. Light weight and -in our car- absolutely no needless parts. Compared to the Mini's luggage compartment the C1 offers lots of space!

Does anybody have any further information on the glove box lid mentioned in the review (part number)? Our dealer cannot find it.

The glove box lid can be found on the citroen accessories website. Details of part numbers are on that page.

I've been extremely pleased with my C1, it was a bargain. It has excellent handling.

There is one major fault with them. I came back from holidays to find my car flooded. I've contacted the Citroen dealer to discuss the issue and they knew of the problem immediately.

You cannot park the car on a slope during rainy periods! It will flood unless you have weatherstrips fitted to it. These take a number of weeks to order so it looks like I'm driving underwater for a while yet!

I am into year 3 of my C1 ownership and I am very pleased indeed!

So far (with exception to accidental damage - E.G. stone chip in the windscreen) the only things I have had to replace are consumables, oil, filters and tyres! I do however service it myself at 8k mile intervals due to the heavy use it sees.

I use the car every day to commute 80-90 miles, and have yet to find issue with its motorway manners.

I have covered 50,000 miles in the car now, and as I approach 3 years of ownership I have decided to keep it at least another 3!

I have had some staggering economy from the car with a record of 78mpg on a careful long run! Unbelievable by anyone standards (N.B. The Sunday Times achieved an astonishing 85.5mpg from the petrol C1!)

The only one issue I have with the car is that I have an airbag warning light that won't turn off. The car was unfortunately in a small front end bump, but as yet I haven't been able to figure out what is causing the light to stay on as everything has been reset. Otherwise the car is spot on.

I do also agree with a number of people about the small boot opening and poor rear wiper being a pain, but these are easily overlooked when you consider the number of other great design features like the neatly hidden rear doors, the remote locking and 3.5mm jack input on the stereo!

I feel I should also add (as someone else had noted they did similar) that I moved from having a BMW 5 series to this C1, and I am certainly not disappointed. It might not have the grunt of a 3.5ltr BMW, but is more than makes up for that with its great sounding rev happy little 3 cylinder engine, and its grip on tight twisty roads with a very neutral handling set up. The factory Michelin Energy E3B tyres are an excellent tyre choice in all weathers, and lasting around 20-25k on the front and 50k on the rear with 'enthusiastic' driving.

Jon :-)

I brought the 06 C1 Vibe, and couldn't be happier with it, it's fantastic and so cheap to run.

I have had a few problems with it, but nothing much to worry about. A small leak through the aerial into the interior light, which Citroen dealt with very quickly, and have not had the problem again.

Also the gear box cover under the car slipped, but again this was sorted very quickly, and with no cost to myself!!

I have also added some alloy wheels, as I found the standard ones too small, and the car would tilt a bit too much into the corners, but I have now put 195 / 45 / 15 on to it, and I have to say the handling is SO much better with less roll!

I would also like to know what oil that the Vibe would take due to the dealers only telling me that it take semi synthetic (which doesn't really help), as I have found that buying the parts to do my own service is 1/4 of the price than to take it to a dealer costing me around £69 to do it myself!! (all parts are Citroen parts)

The 2005- Daihatsu Sirion uses the same engine and many of the C1/Aygo/107 parts, but is built in Japan and has none of the issues the C1 has, plus it is bigger and has more kit.

They are similarly priced to the C1 secondhand, but get standard air-con, electric windows, central locking, split fold rear seats, proper boot, better grip and handling, better motorway ability, better stereo etc etc. The only downside is that the insurance group is 5 not like the C1s group one and the fuel economy is just a little less. Saying that, though, it sits in the same £35 tax band.

My brother runs a 20006 C1 Vibe and I ran a 2008 1.0 Sirion S alongside it - we both agreed the Sirion was the better car overall... even if the C1 was more trendy and cuter.

Because, like the Ford Ka, everyone knows what a C1 is as they are heavily advertised, people ask for them secondhand. The Sirion is mostly unknown due to Daihatsu's stealth selling, and as such are great value secondhand, even if the new price of the base model has now gone up to £8320.

But, for about £4-5000 used, the Sirion really is worth a look as it does most of the things the C1 does, but is more accomplished as the main car, and not as a second car due to its better drive, bigger cabin, better equipment and Japanese build quality.

I love the style and character of the C1, but the odd bits of poor quality are off-putting. No new car should leak, however cheap it is!