Citroën is celebrating: it has assembled the millionth copy of the current C3. The compact Frenchman reached this milestone in roughly five years.
Time for cake and a glass of locally produced champagne at Citroën’s headquarters, as the millionth third-generation C3 has been produced at the Stellantis factory in Trnava, Slovakia. The current model series has been running since 2016. Admittedly not the most successful, but successful enough to reach this milestone and still the best-selling Citroën worldwide. The total counter of all C3’s ever produced has now passed 4.5 million copies.
It all started for the C3 in 2002, when the first generation appeared on the market as a successor to the Saxo. With the C3, the French put down a car that was a lot more extravagant than its predecessor and that was therefore not equally well received by everyone. Not that the Citroën will have made much of a difference, because the bolle happily sold well and surpassed the best year of the Saxo here in the Netherlands in top year 2003 with 8,225 copies sold. The arrival of the extremely special C3 Pluriel in 2003 will have only marginally contributed to this, but in any case showed that after the somewhat modest 90s Citroën no longer feared to show its extravagant side again.
The second C3, which appeared on the market in 2009, largely continued the convex lines of the first. Yet it looked clearly a bit tougher and a mischievous brother was added in the form of the DS3. The C3 family was also expanded with the C3 Picasso, a mini MPV with a high cuddly content. However, the large volumes remained due to the regular C3, which was continued in 2016 in the current third generation. It was only slightly less successful than its predecessors and that will probably also partly be the basis. After all, that is still the platform of the previous C3 and Peugeot 208. It clearly lags behind its competitors, but also its peers, the new 208 and Opel Corsa.
The sales figures in the Netherlands are also on the decline despite last year’s facelift. The peak year was 2017, when Citroën sold the then new C3 5,790 times in our country. Just less than in the best year of the second C3. In total, Citroën has already sold 81,614 copies in the Netherlands. This makes the model, after the BX and C1, the best-selling Citroën since the early 1980s. Chapeau!