French marque Citroen made a name for itself by doing the unconventional. Think of the Traction Avant of 1934, one of the first front wheel drive cars to sell in any significant number literally decades before the format became de rigeur across almost the entire market, or the incredible DS of 1955, with its radical looks and hydropneumatics suspension that delivered the most incredible ride quality. Even the smaller cars were radical and different – look at the Ami of 1961 with its daring styling or the GS of 1970 which had a flat four small capacity high output engine. But this was all costly to do, and by 1974, the money ran out, and the company was rescued by French rival Peugeot. Gradually, we started to see more in the way of sharing of platforms, componentry including engines and transmissions. Some of the cars, such as the CX, and its replacement the XM remained wilfully different from everything else, but gradually the smaller cars became more and more like their rivals. By the time of the 1990s, the mid-sized ZX – a highly capable car – was little different under the skin from a Peugeot 306 and the Citroen Saxo was an even closer relative of the Peugeot 106. Citroen started to be repositioned as a value brand and the early part of the twentyfirst century saw a series of cars with the famous double chevron bade on them that had few standout virtues, but which sold to those who wanted cheap family motoring. A series of concept cars that Citroen proudly presented at various Motor Shows in this period suggested that the creative flair was far from dead in the heart of Citroen design studios, but the company was clearly anxious about the commercial prospects of deviating very far from what everyone else was offering. The brave pill was swallowed with the production version of the C4 Cactus of 2014, a family-sized hatch that deliberately deviated from its rivals in a hotly contested class where all the cars are increasingly indistinguishable from each in merit terms if not quite (though it’s getting close) styling. The C4 Cactus stood out with its air bumps down the side, and by being offered in an array of bold and bright colours. It was not long before some of the same thinking was applied to Citroen’s B-segment contender, the C3. The third generation of this car made is appearance in late August 2016, and it followed the same sort of approach, with SUV-esque styling, and the ability to personalise it not just from the 9 standard paint finishes but also from the three contrast shades that appear on the roof, foglight trims, side mirrors, and Airbump surrounds, which gave a total of 36 different colour combinations. Underneath, the third generation C3 is bult on the same PSA PF1 platform which also underpins the Peugeot 208, though the two cars look very different. A mid-cycle update arrived in 2020 with the usual subtle changes to lights and bumpers as well as the addition of the latest tech features which buyers allegedly continue to expect. The C3 has sold very well in its native France, as you might expect, and it also does well in Italy, regularly appearing in the Top 10 Sales lists there. So perhaps it was not a surprise when I arrived at Bologna airport for a week’s vacation, to find that a sizeable batch of C3 cars had been added to the Hertz Italia fleet, and that one was allocated to me. As I’d not driven one yet, I was happy to take this car and see what I thought of it.

Perhaps surprisingly, given the rapid market move away from the fuel type, the test car was diesel-powered, using the proven 1.5 HDi engine that has featured in many Peugeot and Citroen products in recent years. In this form, it puts out 100 bhp. The C3 sounds quite civilised on starting up, with little of the characteristic diesel sound. Get underway and you quickly realise that to get the best out of this engine you are going to have to work it quite hard. There is very little available in first gear, so an almost instant change-up is called for, and second is also a gear to move beyond equally quickly. After that, the available torque makes things much better until you reach sixth. the top gear, which is definitely there for steady speed cruising, as there is no meaningful acceleration available, with the engine spinning at just 2000 rpm. There is quite a long travel between the gears but the movements are more positive than you think and a significant improvement on Peugeot/Citroen gearboxes of a few years ago. Sadly, there was a rather pervasive droning whine noise at cruising speed which was really quite irksome. There is some road noise as well, so this is not quite as peaceful a long distance car as you might hope. Fuel economy proved very good. Much of the driving was done on main roads as opposed to the autostrada, and the routes included a number of hilly parts of Italy, so what I achieved is probably a fair representation of what you could except to see over a period longer than the week that I had the car. It did have a Stop/Start system, but this did not cut in that often, as I managed to avoid traffic for most of my time behind the wheel. All told I covered 1670km in my time with the C3, and after 653km filled it up with 34 litres. I put another 31 litres in having covered the same distance again and a further 13 litres before handing the car back. Add all that lot up and do the conversions to figures that are more meaningful to those of us in the UK who think in traditional terms and the answer is 58.5 mpg.

In the best of French motoring tradition, the C3 prioritises comfort over sportiness and there is not much in the way of driver engagement. The steering is very light, which makes the car easy to drive in town and to park up, but it is also pretty vague so there is really not much of a clue when you are at greater speed as to what the steered wheels are going to do. Whilst grip levels are good, there is plenty of body roll, so this is not really a car that you will throw into the bends with gusto expecting to have fun from behind the wheel. The upside of this, not surprisingly, is that even on relatively large 205/50 R17 wheels, the ride is good, with the soft suspension keeping the Citroen comfortable on some of the rougher surfaces that you do find on provincial Italian roads. The brakes worked well, doing their job as required. There is a conventional pull-up handbrake between the seats. All round visibility is as good as you get with modern cars and the rear-view camera did prove useful on a couple of occasions when parking in a tight spot. It did take me a while to find the adjusters for the door mirrors which are hidden on the dash.

Citroen have clearly made a big effort with the interior of the C3 to come up with something distinctive and with some character, and they’ve largely succeeded. Yes, there are lots of hard plastics in use, and they have not been able to resist the current trend for shiny gloss black plastic, but the design itself is quite imaginative with lots of rectangles, for the air vents, the instrument cluster and on the door casings and the use of straps more like you find on expensive luggage than a simple armrest pull certainly stands out. There are conventional instruments, with larger speedometer and rev counter at the edge of the cluster and smaller fuel level and water temperature across the upper centre, over the trip computer display area which does include a digital speed repeater. All are clearly marked and easy to read. There are two column stalks, which include an auto function for the wipers. Almost everything else is relegated to the central 7” colour touch screen including the air conditioning controls. This was powerful but noisy and awkward to use, but thankfully the rest of the screen was a little better in usability terms, though the unit is set lower down the centre of the dash than you get in some cars. This car included Citroen Connect Navigation and whilst I never did figure out how to switch it from Italian to English, the clarity of the voice unit and the quality of the map graphics meant I could use the system as I found it. Sound quality from the audio element was OK, though I rarely find anything much on Italian radio that I would want to listen to! There are six speakers, DAB radio, media streaming, and just one USB port, as well as Apple Car Play.

Not surprisingly the seat upholstery is of a cloth material and seat adjustment is all manual. There is quite a feeling of space here, with especially generous headroom, a result of the SUV-esque styling of the C3. The seat itself proved very comfortable, too, soft enough to fit your body well without feeling too squishy.  The front passenger has to do without a height adjuster, but given the amount of headroom on offer, this should not present a problem even to taller occupants here.

Rear room is decent, too, considering this is a relatively small car. Even though you sit quite high, there is enough headroom. Legroom will depend on just far back the front seats are set, of course, but even when they are set fully back, there should just about be enough for adults. The backs of the front seats are curved in the lower part to give that bit more space. There are no luxuries here, though, even in a top spec model like the test car, with no armrest, and no door pockets, just some door bins and access to a central stowage tray.

The boot of the C3 is deep but this does mean that there is quite a high sill. It is a nice regular shape and with a quoted capacity of 300 litres, should prove ample for the sort of usage that a car like this typically gets. More space – 992 litres – can be created by folding the asymmetrically split rear seat backrests down, though the resulting platform is not exactly flat. These numbers ar good, but they are not class-leading with quite a lot more space on offer in a Fiesta or a Fabia. There is no spare wheel, just a tyre inflation kit. Inside the cabin there is a huge glovebox, pockets on the doors, a shelf in the dash and cupholders in front of the gearlever.

The C3 dips into the corporate parts bin for a range of engines and gearboxes. From launch there were a choice of petrol and diesel units. The petrol ones both being the 1.2 THP Puretech unit, offering either 83 (without a turbo) or 110 bhp (with a turbo) from the three cylinders. These proved to be the big sellers, but noting that diesel, whilst much less popular than it was, is still what some buyers want then from the outset there was a 1.6 HDI four cylinder unit with 75 or 110 bhp. Later, the less powerful of these was replaced by the 100 bhp 1.5 HDi unit as featured in the test car. The most powerful petrol and diesel models were available with an optional 6 speed automatic gearbox. Everything else came with a six speed manual apart from the entry level car which had to make do with 5 speeds.  More recently, when Citroen phased out the smaller C1, they introduced a stripped out 62 bhp version of the 1.2 litre petrol car, with a reduced spec and a low price.  There have been a vast array of different trims offered even with an individual market, let alone between different ones. Initially the trims were called Touch, Feel and Flair. Following the mid-cycle update in late 2020, there were 4 trims offered, C-Series, Sense, Shine & Shine Plus. They have since been changed again in name but the essence of what is in each of the four levels has not altered much. Of course there is no badging to tell you, but from what I could work out from the Citroen Italia website, my test car was a Shine Plus, which is the top of the range in trim terms. This version gives you Citroen Connect Nav with Real Time Traffic and Speedcam information and also gains the Safety Pack 2 with automatic emergency braking, collision risk alert, and Intelligent Beam Headlights.  You also get a leather-wrapped steering wheel, a reversing camera, dark tinted rear windows, front foglights and 17″ “Vector” diamond-cut alloy wheels. Starting from the bottom of the range, the C3 YOU, with the 62 bhp engine really is not as stripped out as you may fear, despite the 15” steel wheels, and a 5” black and white screen as you still get DAB radio, Bluetooth, cruise control, front foglights, LED front lights and lane departure warning. Upgrade to the C-Series and in addition to a more powerful engine, you get quite a lot of extra features which include rear parking sensors, Lane departure warning, 6-inch ‘matrix’ alloys, LED headlights with LED daytime running lights, the 7-inch touchscreen, an Onyx black roof, electrically adjustable, heated folding door mirrors, cruise control with speed limiter and speed sign recognition. The Sense version has 16-inch steel wheels, automated air-con, gloss black door mirrors and a Black colour pack (black foglight surround and white Airbump capsule). Shine trim adds the Visibility Pack which includes automatic rain-sensing front windscreen wipers and automatic lights. You also get roof coloured door mirrors and 6″ “Hellix” diamond-cut alloy wheels.

In the best Citroen tradition, the C3 dares to be a bit different. And that means it won’t necessarily appeal to everyone. Far from the last word in being fun to drive, the priority here is comfort and if that is what you want, then the C3 is certainly worth a look, especially if the distinctive design flourishes appeal. And if you select one of the models from lower down the range, the C3 also scores highly on value. The spec of the test car almost certainly was not the sweet spot in the range, but I can see why people would want some of the tech upgrades that come with the Shine Plus trim, and the economy of the diesel unit will still have its appeal. What put me off was the rather droney noise at cruising speed and the relative unusablity of the touchscreen. This latter is getting harder to avoid in any car, but the former is not a problem you will find in the C3’s rivals, and given a row of superminis, I think it is one of those I would pick instead, but if you get allocated a C3, then rejoice in the fact that it is a deliberate deviation from some of the other norms.