On the road: Citroën C1 Airscape – <b>car review</b> | Helen Pidd <b>...</b> |
| On the road: Citroën C1 Airscape – <b>car review</b> | Helen Pidd <b>...</b> Posted: 05 Dec 2014 10:00 PM PST Citroën C1 Airscape: 'A lot of effort has gone into making it look snazzier than its rivals.' Photograph: Simon Stuart-Miller for the Guardian Just as it feels all wrong wearing tights in July, mid-November is not the best time of year to test a soft top in the north of England. Alas, Citroën's promotional cycle does not run to the same schedule as the Mancunian seasons, which is how I came to be zipping around the soggy autumnal streets in the C1 Airscape, waiting for an opportunity to try out the retractable fabric roof without getting wet. Every time I even thought about taking the top off, the heavens would open and I'd crank the windscreen wipers into overdrive instead. Only once during my happy week with the C1 did I get to feel the wind in my hair, returning from working on a story down a saltmine in Cheshire. After a couple of hours under the ground learning about trunk road gritting, I emerged into the sunlight in need of fresh, non-salty air, my eyebrows caked with grubby crusts like an unwashed Arctic explorer. This is my moment, I thought, leaving Winsford. I reached up to activate the roof. Then it started raining again and the salt dissolved into my eyes, which is not terribly helpful when bombing along an A-road. Luckily the C1 is designed with the partially sighted in mind. The touchscreen display uses a font of such grand proportions that the driver behind can almost certainly read it, too. It's a car for people who aren't very good at driving: a message pops up on the dashboard telling you to shift up or down a gear as appropriate. There's also a reversing camera and Hill Start Assist, which holds the car steady for two seconds on gradients over 3%. The headlights come on when it's dark and turn off when you remove the key from the ignition. The C1 is basically a girl's car: Citroën advertises it as "sassy" – an adjective never deployed to reel in male consumers. Given that it shares its mechanical running gear and much of its bodywork with Toyota's Aygo and Peugeot's 108, more effort has gone into making it look snazzier than its rivals than into making it drive smoothly. I had to put my foot down to get it going, but I enjoyed being seen in it. I'm pretty sure my colleague Jess Cartner-Morley has written a column before explaining why red and black do not belong together – it's a bit office Christmas party – but I thought it looked the biz. I loved the tarty juxtaposition of lipstick-red roof and wing mirrors, and shiny black body, even if it is reminiscent of a box of Black Magic. I only wish it had been summer.  Price from £11,785  |
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