Citroen C3 Aircross Review 2025

If you want seven seats in a brand new car without spending a load of money, your only option is the Dacia Jogger. At least, it was. New for 2025 is not one but two new, budget seven-seater options — the Vauxhall Frontera and this one. Find out everything you need to know with our full Citroen C3 Aircross review.

In a lot of ways the Citroen and Vauxhall are effectively the same car. Both come from Stellantis, a sort of amorphous blob of a company bringing together a dizzying array of different car brands and making various vehicles from the same bits and pieces.

The Citroen C3 Aircross and Vauxhall Frontera, along with the more modestly dimensioned Fiat Grande Panda hatchback all sit on Stellantis’s Smart Car underpinnings, apparently named by someone who didn’t think it’d be confused with the Smart car brand's models which are otherwise wholly unrelated.

Compare pictures of the Citroen C3 Aircross and the Frontera, particularly of the sides, and you’ll see that the two don’t even look so distinct from one another. The design of the C3 Aircross, Citroen says, exudes a sense of ‘verticality’. Although anyone who’s not a car designer will probably just say that ‘it looks a bit boxier now’.

Similarities with the Vauxhall notwithstanding we very much like the look of the new Citroen C3 Aircross — bodywork apart a few things have been done to distinguish it from the Frontera. First off, it has Citroen's Advanced Comfort Suspension which other brands in the Stellantis multiverse aren’t allowed to touch. Secondly, it comes with Easter eggs. 

Sadly these aren’t of the chocolate variety. Instead, they’re hidden little details that might just brighten up your day when you spot them, including silhouettes of the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame Cathedral and — France's national bird — the Gallic rooster hidden in the heater elements of the rearmost side windows. 

These are neat little details to include considering the third differentiating factor of the Citroen C3 Aircross — price. Starting at a smidge over £20,000, it undercuts the Vauxhall Frontera by a few grand. Even factoring in the £765 needed to bag the third-row option — only available with the most expensive model variant — it’s brilliant value for money for a small SUV.

We should caveat our moaning about the Citroen C3 Aircross's ride to say that it is definitely not uncomfortable — and it might even be a bit softer than most — with the hydraulic bump stops in the Advanced Comfort Suspension working as advertised.

Being kinder to your spine whenever a speed bump is negotiated that little bit too quickly is fine but it doesn’t go as far as the Citroen C4 in terms of suppleness which seems a shame. 

This is offset by the tidy manner in which it handles corners. It doesn’t unduly roll about nor does it start to skip around if really pushed as can sometimes happen with high-riding cars like this.

There’s plentiful amounts of grip and traction, plus reasonably fast steering  On the right road you might even call it fun. But we’d rather the Citroen C3 Aircross took a bit of a hit in this area to make it more comfortable the rest of the time. 

Meanwhile at cruising speeds you get a sense of where costs have been saved with this new platform. You get a fairly sizeable helping of both wind and road noise, the latter being particularly surprising considering the tyres aren’t all that wide.

We’re yet to sample the Citroen C3 Aircross with its Puretech 100 entry-level petrol but it’s based around the same 1.2-litre engine as the Hybrid 136. It’s a unit we’ve tried in plenty of other cars, so we largely know what to expect.

The 1.2 is a three-cylinder engine and that makes for something that vibrates quite a bit. There are worse triples for this trait but also ones that are smoother. Especially at idle, this Stellantis engine does pass a fair bit of vibration into the cabin.

Citroen's statistics for the C3 Aircross Puretech 100 paired with a six-speed manual gearbox are a 99PS power output and 205Nm of torque, suffcient for a 0-62mph time of 10.6 seconds and a top speed of 111mph.

Hitting 0-62mph in 10.1 seconds, the Hybrid 136 doesn’t qualify as slow, but it certainly isn’t fast either. The performance from the engine itself is fine on the road, but it’s the six-speed automatic gearbox which leaves it hamstrung. For a dual-clutch gearbox system the changes never seem that hurried, and it often seems to take an age to kick down under harder acceleration. 

It's also worth noting that despite its name the Hybrid 136 isn't a self-charging type but a mild hybrid designed to save a little fuel when cruising or slowing, as well as a burst of energy when accelerating. Power output is 136PS, torque's rated at 230Nm and the top speed is quoted at 125mph.

So far the Citroen C3 Aircross hasn’t yet been crash-tested by Euro NCAP, nor have any other vehicles built on the same underpinnings. The old one was rated as five stars by the safety body albeit under a less-stringent set of protocols but we fully expect a high score from the new C3 Aircross, in line with other recent models from Citroen and related Stellantis brands. 

An abundance of safety technology is fitted as standard including lane departure warning, a video-based autonomous emergency braking system, a driver attention alert and speed limit recognition with a warning for when you creep over.

Or at least, for when you creep over what the car thinks the limit is — it often proved itself significantly wrong during our first experiences with it. At the car's launch we once saw it display a 90kmh limit as 20kmh. Whoops. Thankfully, the associated warning bong sound can be turned off to stop it from driving you up the wall.

A small car probably won’t be high up on your hitlist if you’re looking to tow frequently but in any case the Citroen C3 Aircross Puretech 100 has the better capacity at 650kg/1500kg unbraked/braked.

Choose the Hybrid 136 and those totals drop to 710kg/1250kg, respectively.

The maximum tow ball weight is 65kg across both models which you need to be wary of if you intend on carrying a few of those fancy new e-bikes that are all the rage on a tow bar-mounted carrier. 

Stuffing seven seats into a 4.4-metre car was always going to be a compromise. As such, it’s inevitable that boot space is almost non-existent on seven-seater Citroen C3 Aircross models when the third row is deployed.

The quoted figure is a hilarious 40 litres and it would have to be something oddly shaped and/or very malleable to actually fit in the awkward space left between the seatbacks and the inside of the tailgate. 

Opting for those extra chairs means that you’re also taking a 130 litre hit even if the rearmost bench folded down. When lowered the C3 Aircross's boot capacity is 300 litres compared with 460 litres in standard five-seater-only guise. Second-row passengers also get more legroom in the five-seater versions, as the bench is set 65mm further back.

Total luggage capacity when all rear seats are folded on the seven-seater version 1470 litres, while the five-seater's capacity is 1600 litres when just the front two seats are in use.

The Citroen C3 Aircross's fabric-covered dashboard is a nice touch, although the little labels on each door pull handle that say things like ‘have fun’ and ‘be cool’ might just push you over the edge when getting in the car on a gloomy Monday in January. Then again it shows that some thought has been put into finishing off the cabin. This isn't a bargain-basement, funtion-led Citroen interior of days gone by. 

In terms of quality, it’s not a surprise to see an abundance of cheaper-feeling plastics given how little Citroen is charging for this car but at least the stuff in your eyeline tends to be of a more premium construction. The use of piano black plastic trim even gives a bit of a premium feel, although the glossy finish will easily pick up scratches in time. 

It’s annoying to see that the Citroen C3 Airocross's infotainment screen has to be used for most of the climate functions, with physical buttons only for a few controls such as rear windscreen demisting. Sadly we can’t single the Citroen out for this as it’s becoming a common setup across most manufacturers. 

Generally the infotainment screen is fine — it’s responsive enough and is easier to navigate than other Citroen systems with an extremely simple menu system.

Rather than being joined by a similar-sized screen to the side forming the driver's instrument cluster, as is the case on the Vauxhall Frontera, the Citroen C3 Aircross instead uses a much smaller, more basic display embedded into the dashboard.

It's clear and easy to read and that's all that really matters.

The Citroen C3 Aircross starts at £20,240 for the Puretech 100 engine which is only available in Plus trim. Interestingly at £23,740, the Hybrid 136 Plus actually costs £750 more than the electric Citroen e-C3 Aircross version. We're used to electric versions of cars carrying a hefty premium, so hopefully this is a sign of things to come.

Even if you upgrade to Max trim, you won’t be paying much with the Citroen C3 Aircross Hybrid 136 Max costing £25,740.

Those prices are for the five-seater versions of the Citroen C3 Aircross. If you want the seven-seater option then be aware that it's only optional on the Hybrid 136 Max version and costs an extra £765.

Non-metallic Monte Carlo Blue is the only free-of-charge colour with the optional finishes ranging from £275 to £1020.

As you'd hope with the small SUV the Citroen C3 Aircross isn't especially thirst when it comes to unleaded petrol. Note that unlike its predecessor there's no diesel-engined option but there is a fully electric e-C3 Aircross.

The most efficient combustion-powered model is the Hybrid 136 which manages between 47.3-57.4mpg according to the WLTP Combined cycle. The Puretech 100 petrol isn’t too far behind, managing 47.1mpg. This time around, there’s no diesel option.

Emissions-wise the C3 Aircross is rated at 136g/km of CO2 for the Puretech 100 engine and 121g/km with the Hybrid 136 system, placing them in the 32% and 29% Benefit-in-Kind (BiK) company car tax bands, respectively.

The Citroen C3 Aircross range is easy-peasy to understand, with only two trim levels — Plus and Max — and two engines, one of which can only be combined with the entry-level grade anyway. 

Kicking things off is the Citroen C3 Aircross Plus which comes with a healthy standard equipment list including a 10.25-inch touchscreen infotainment system, 17-inch alloy wheels, rear parking sensors, LED headlights, electric windows all round and a whole host of safety technology. 

Plus can be paired with both engine options — the Puretech 100 manual and the Hybrid 136 dual-clutch automatic. 

Upgrade to the Citroen C3 Aircross Max to add 3D rear light clusters, a two-tone paint finish with a white or black roof depending on the main body colour you pick, wireless phone charging, front parking sensors, an automatically dimming rear-view mirror, blind-spot detection and a Winter Pack. That bundles together heated front seats, a heated steering wheel and a heated windscreen.

This trim grade can only be combined with the Hybrid 136.