1.0i AirPlay+ 3dr

Good City Car

I bought this car new back in 2007 as a second car which was a cheap city runaround. I kept the car for 3 years and in which time it covered 25.000 miles, then my older sister bought it off of me and kept it until 2014 and 65.000 miles.

Both me and my sister loved how easy the C1 was to drive and it’s tiny size gave it the ability to get into any parking space. We also loved the fact it never seemed to use fuel and the £20 a year road tax. We also loved the fact it was good in the snow and parts were fairly cheap (more on that later). Another positive was the remote central locking and MP3 connectivity, giving the ability to play music- which not many cars of that size had back then.

However, above city speeds the C1 did feel out of its element and struggled to keep up with traffic and all you could hear was wind noise, tyre roar and the little 3 cylinder unit struggle. In fairness that is to be expected of a car like this, but it still was not what you would call refined. The seats, whilst not bad for a city car were not what you would call comfy. You would not want to do a long journey in a Citroen C1.

I also disliked the interior of the C1. Mine being the AirPlay+ it got splashings of chrome wrapped trim about the place, where the more basic cars - yes that’s possible in 2007, had dull black plastic. But to keep costs down PSA/Toyota did not fully cover the doors in plastic, leaving the bare metal of the doors on show on the inside not only looking and feeling cheap but if you placed your arm on the window in winter you got cold and in summer you got burned. In fairness, the plastics on the centre console were better than I would expect from a little city car.

Another downside to the C1/Aygo/107 was the minuscule boot capacity. Your weekly shop would fill the boot and have to go on the back seats. Again, I don’t expect much from a car of this size but a little bit extra space would’ve been nice. Whilst on the subject of practicality, the glovebox cover was fitted after market at Citroen as originally it was more like a shelf where theifs could see everything I was storing, and it was still tiny.
And there wasn’t any storage nets behind the seats for rear passengers to use, so if they wanted to store anything then all they could do was hold the item in their hands.

Then there’s reliability. Being related to a Toyota, I expected the C1 to be a very robust little car. However during my ownership the alternator failed, even though the car was only three years old.

But it was as the car approached the 60.000 mile mark in my sister’s ownership where the car started to struggle.

Her first issue with the C1 was at 50.000 when the clutch started to give up quite early on and the Citroen dealer wanted over £500 for a replacement. I told her to go to a PSA/Toyota Specialist and she got a new clutch for much less than that.

The next issue emerged at around 60.000 miles when it started leaking water into the boot, apparently a common fault and was fixed at the Citroen Dealer. She then kept the car for another 5.000 miles and then traded it in.

Overall, the Citroen C1/Peugeot 107/Toyota Aygo is not a bad car. It can be fairly fun and easy to drive at low speeds, and is very economical and cheap to run. Although not being the most reliable, I have experienced worse and I would recommend one to somebody who wants a cheap city runaround and doesn’t do many miles a year.

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