The French brand’s budget SUV is more value than cheap and can be had with seven seats
Europe’s modal average, typical new car has, for several years now almost certainly been a supermini-based, B-segment SUV. Given the soaring popularity of the likes of the Ford Puma, Nissan Juke, Vauxhall Mokka, Renault Captur and more, it’s remarkable enough that there are any ‘firsts’ left to accomplish in the class. And yet Citroën is laying claim to one with the second-generation Citroen C3 Aircross.This new, higher-riding, marginally tougher-looking, stretched version of the Citroen C3 supermini is the first car in its segment – a pumped-up supermini segment, let’s not forget – to offer seven seats. It doesn’t do so as standard and yet, still, it becomes a fairly unique prospect among new cars: one to combine a footprint that’s narrowly under 4.4 metres in length with three rows of seating for those who have a use for them.The usual Tardis-like analogies are clearly invited. Seven seats in cars of comparable length, such as the Dacia Jogger, are offered elsewhere, but none among cars identified less as MPVs and more as pint-sized SUVs. Now for the Autocar road test tape measure to bear witness to how much usable space there really is in this car, and whether it’s a packaging marvel, an exercise in futility – or something in between.Like the smaller C3, it can be had as an electric ë-C3 Aircross; as a conventional turbocharged petrol; or as a 48V ‘self-charging’ petrol-electric hybrid. It was the last version we elected to test.
