In the 1990s, not big grilles, but big logos almost became the trend
Everyone loves life on the coast, right? And of course the French Riviera is the ultimate dream, with weather that is usually so pronounced sunny that you will hardly need a roof on your car. It was that sentiment that Citroën tried to evoke at the 1998 Paris Motor Show, with the unveiling of the Citroën C3 Air concept car.
The company was already busy making the public happy for the new C3, although it would take another three or four years before it was really there. The range was actually full of relatively old cars, so Citroën was eager to show that it was still young and hip and fashionable and all that. And what better way to show your cheerfulness and frivolity than by showing a cheerful and frivolous open car?
And what kind of open car
It was quite a statement from the French manufacturer, with its leaning forward cab-forward design and blob-like proportions. It had large wind deflecting side windows, probably in an effort to prevent your carefully blow-dried coupe from blowing up to cotton candy size on the way back to the villa. The seats could be folded flat to create a pickup-like cargo area, and the Citroën C3 Air had perky roof pillars that could be used in different ways to make different types of convertibles.
The Citroën C3 Air concept was also a masterclass in interior minimalism – there was no instrument panel, just a rotating case on the back of the dashboard, at the start of the windshield, with a petrol, temperature and speedometer, and that was it. No infotainment, just a round ventilation disc that the passengers could play with. Well, at least you don’t have to whine about which song to put on it.
The Citroën C3 Air did not come
Unfortunately, the C3 Air was also a masterclass in the disappointing reality versus the dream a concept offers. It certainly wasn’t that Citroën was afraid to come up with something special – barely a year after showing this concept, the Xsara Picasso came on the market, a small MPV designed in such a way that you could hardly see what was going on. the front or back. That car was even more extreme than the Xanae concept, which had more or less announced it in 1994.
We did get the Pluriel
A similar but conceptually worse version of the C3 Air went into production a year after the release of the C3 hatchback in 2003: the C3 Pluriel. Apparently someone at headquarters was very pleased with the good reception of the C3 Air, but the production version was considerably less Antibes and more Zoutelande.
The C3 Air concept car was so bad it was cool, while the Pluriel was so bad it was bad. The roof was heavy and intricate, the car as stiff as a moving box after a week in the rain. And it didn’t look nearly as nice as the concept. Okay, that’s almost always the case, but we can dream, right? And so we keep dreaming of cruising the Riviera in a wonderful little convertible.
