Releasing a new car can always lead to surprises. There are some categories and some cars whose history enables to have certain expectations, but each and every one always has at least a minimum potential of surprising its own brand. Some unfortunately end up as big failures even though being excellent products, but it’s interesting to observe that others hit the streets escaping from the existing “guaranteed-sales formulas” and turn out creating one of their own. This car is Citroën’s attempt to expand DS3’s unexpected success.
Citroën DS3 deserves this bigger credit because of all the context in which it was released. Fiat, Mini and Volkswagen were already enjoying the success of 500, Cooper and New Beetle specially in Europe, which was leading to firming them as members of a brand new category: the retro hatchbacks, whose bigger prices were compensated by cutting-edge technologies and plenty of luxury wrapped in 1950s-inspired designs. Since those three were having good sales, it was expected that more automakers joined them, like the French ones. Citroën was already preparing a car with their size and luxury level, but originally not to compete with them: their hatchback was meant to stabilish the DS line among the world, the brand’s division dedicated to create luxury alternatives to its own conventional vehicles. Therefore, DS3 was intended to be C3’s classier brother, making much bigger concessions to form over function, such as having only two doors and four seats, but also clearly expressing the common DNA, sharing platform and even some visible items, like the headlights. It didn’t take long to be very well-accepted, but the surprise came from the fact of this car starting to compete with the retro ones, even though DS3’s style is the exact opposite – from every angle it’s observed there’s something expressing sporty futurism, big or small.
In fact, it’s even possible to infer that this market’s unknown flexibility was what motivated Audi to release A1 already one year after Citroën’s car, also using a modern design, and most recently Opel, with Adam’s mixture of old and new elements. This versatility is also being used by the convertible versions of these cars: Cooper uses a full cabriolet body, while 500C decided to keep the whole side panels and open only roof and rear windshield… just like this article’s car has now decided to present. DS3 Cabrio’s removable roof has electric operation, being able to stop as full closed, full removed and folded right above the trunk lid, and an intermediate option in which the fabric roof stays on the top, also folded in a way that resembles a spoiler – going between the extreme positions takes about sixteen seconds and can be done while driving at up to 75 mph. Although the pleasure of driving without roof is partially lost with this solution, it’s also important to notice that it keeps very much of the car’s safety untouched, because the structural changes are kept to a minimum. So if Citroën had no need to apply extensive stiffness reinforcements, it became free to invest on another topic which these cars’ customers find very interesting: Cabrio’s seats will have three color options, while the central console makes a contrast between piano black and six other options. And the roof, which looks exactly like the rigid ones when closed, can come in ten different fabric options.
