I still see these running in rural Spain and France, usually held together with wire and hope, clocking like what 400k+ km? The XUD diesel engines are practically unkillable. They have no ECU to brick, no adblue sensors to fail and put the car into limp mode and thankfully none of those DRM locked headlights.

The argument for the countryside need of a modern SUV usually cites reliability and safety, and in 2026, modern complexity is the enemy of reliability. If your C15 breaks down in a field, you can fix it with a wrench. If your Range Rover breaks down in a field because a sensor in the air suspension noticed a voltage variance...you are stranded until a tow truck takes it to a dealer.

My first car I got in Germany was a C15. I used it to transport server racks, but also had a mattress in the back and had my first sex on it. On muddy festivals where others cars got stuck, I was able to get out easily. Repairs were dirt cheap. It also had a tow bar, and was able to pull a 1.5 metric ton trailer to get equipment to a computer party.

And I still was able to do 160 km/h (100 MPH) with it on the Autobahn. With or without server racks, with or without sex.

Best car I ever had.

It is really insane that these days cars on average weigh 25-40 times of their load. Human stupidity never ceases to amaze me.

The craziest thing about this criticism is that it is phrased as hyperbole but the reality is that this is seen as a small truck in the US.

The Ford Ranger actually is the best selling pickup truck in Europe for 10 straight years, but doesn’t sell as much in the US. The larger F series trucks sell more than an order of magnitude more in the US.

Also this car has only has 60hp.

1) Guillotine for the super rich

2) Nuclear to power >70%

3) C15 for people, cows, craftsmen, mini house

4) TGV

5) french fries for the fastest carbohydrate delivery, handily beating rice

I wish they bring back the first 3 and do some shorts, market them to the world. Fries are doing fine.

In a crash it'll fold up like the tin can it is, even against a car of a similar vintage and size (no comment on the cows). Up against even a modern supermini and you're literal mince meat, let alone a modern SUV. At least you won't suffer long.

So if you are off roading or on a snowy road, hopefully you won't slip into a tree or roll over. Modern cars - even "small" ones -are heavier partly because they are substantially safer. A crash that would have had to have you cut out of the wreckage by the fire brigade (potentially losing a limb or two in the process) is now the sort of thing you can walk away from. Yes even in "small" modern cars (you do not need a SUV for safety).

It's night and day really - just go look at the archive on EuroNCAP.. In the crash tests that left 90s and early 2000s cars as unrecognisable mounds of broken and twisted metal (e.g. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9a8PTeFDaYU which was a car that was probably 10 years more advanced than the c15 in terms of safety...) now barely even break the windscreen of modern super-mini cars (e.g. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NaWVepTJTGw&t=1s&pp=2AEBkAIB). Amazing.

It broke down recently at 18 years of age and I can't justify maintaining a car in Berlin, but I loved that car to bits.

I remember in Belgium when the laws pushed for lower CO2, and you got an influx of all these diesel engines, as you couldn't get that low with gasoline engines (that had some power).

But a few years later people came to the realization that CO2 is the least bad of the global warming gasses, and those diesel engines emitted a lot of NOx.

Every year there was a distance that you'd have to drive before diesel made sense (as you get more miles out of a gallon, and it was cheaper per gallon).

That number kept on creeping up due to new diesel taxes, and the fact that diesel is no longer cheaper per unit than gas.

Today, Citroen's equivalent offering is the Berlingo. Starts at 26k, not as much of a tank as the other cars but still way more massive than the C15.

The gas meter was broken, so my friend had to guesstimate when he needed a refill.

At one point it was stolen, but then found a week later on the side of the highway,out of gas..

That was a good perspective though- I grew up hearing Citroen makes garbage.

Side note- The vast majority of pollution is from industry. By a lot. That is where the finger needs to be pointing. Pointing the finger at SUV drivers distracts from the real issue and keeps us blaming each other.

What does that mean? The thread just repeating this compensating thing but not sure what does it try to say really.

Also most women I know drive SUVs or family vans not compact cars. Are they compensating for something?

There was no part on this which didn't get replaced during the scant few years he owned it, and it left him stranded like half a dozen times.

He contemplated setting it on fire rather than selling it, not wanting the next lucky owner to go through the same stuff he did.

It was the basis of a successful line of British built micro-campers from Romahome.

https://www.practicalmotorhome.com/advice/used-romahome-on-c...

I remember looking at one as a surf-van back in the day.

https://youtu.be/Yl1FNX08HFc

Our roads are bigger, gas is dirt cheap, parking is plentiful and spacious outside dense metros, and the RAM 1500 I own is 100x more useful no mater how you want to try and spin the facts. I can tow a large trailer with my Jeep on it, a large RV, boats, etc. It is highly capable off roading on technical terrain here in Utah. It’s also insanely comfortable and luxurious on road trips and has enough room to lay on the rear bench seat as if it were a bed. I truly use all of the capabilities in a niche that almost no other vehicle besides a standard size truck occupies.

The new electrics are great. But they are less of a car and more of a transportation technology.

> CO2 emissions/km:

No, you have already compared fuel consumption. This is equivalent.

The gross vehicle weight (ie the max vehicle weight with the heifers, obviously stuffies) of the C15 is 1500 kg (hence the name) or 3300 lb.

Uhaul rents a car tow trailer rated for 5000 lb that weighs 2200 lb [1].

The Ranger, then, can tow the C-15 + the heifers = 5500 lb and have 2000 lb left over to put two real heifers, and do this legally at 70mph.

Citroen makes great vehicles though. Amazing off roaders.

[1] https://www.uhaul.com/Trailers/Auto-Transport-Rental/AT/

If you are person that doesn’t give a fuck about keeping up with Jones’s you just buy whatever does the job.

I could drive much better car but I don’t have to impress my neighbors.

Still with non-impressive car I get pushed around on the road by guys in big and impressive cars. But also I drive on defense anyway so I get them to go far away from me by letting them pass.

I am quite fit though not super big or anything and car I drive is attributable to old geezers or ladies. Once guy jumped out of the car to shout at me he took his tone two notches down quickly.

So technically you might be right but still there is whole human experience to deal with.

That's the entire difference.

Hat tip to Joel Garreau, from whom I stole this reading of that kind of comma.

> I call bullshit, Ladies and Gentlemen, allow me to introduce, the Citroen C15

But they aren’t even for sale in the US!

I have "repaired" one that was used to power a small fishing boat (it came out of a Xantia, and the hydraulic pump was used to operate the shooting gear). The boat sank and the engine compartment was flooded with sea water for about a week. It started up and ran quite happily after draining what was approximately a 50/50 mix of sea water and sludgy engine oil and putting fresh in, then removing the injectors and cranking it to blow the water out of the cylinders.

It never quite ran right after that and was hard to start, and five or six years later the boat's owner replaced it with another Xantia engine, this time the turbocharged version.

I mean this is excluding beds. C15 doesn't have one.

"The Ford Ranger (2020). One of the most popular pickups in the US.

A key selling point is that the cabin is so high you can run over toddlers without even noticing."

Lovely people as always. Would you like to live neighbours with this person, or share communal facilities with him?

I don't dispute that it was useful and reliable: I remember the milkman and plumbers and electricians having these. Note that some had a 2CV and would just cut off the roof (don't tell me it wasn't a thing: I've got pictures of me as a kid in a 2CV whose roof was cut).

Only the french have the "taste" to create such uglyness as the C15. It's hard to understand how a country can both produce the Concorde and the C15.

Even the russian and their Lada brand never managed to create something as fugly as the 4L or the C15.

Now you'll excuse me but I've got to take a look at what nature produces:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bird-of-paradise

Because that C15 brings back memories from a traumatizing time where uglyness was ruling the world.

P.S: I owned a Citroen VISA: it's hard to tell if it was only the 2nd ugliest Citroen ever after the C15 (indisputably the fugliest of them all) because Citroen produced soooo many turds.

And the demographics made sense: you’d expect to see more moms dropping off kids, at least in redder parts of the country, and the back row is supposed safest (as long as you only plan on getting into head-on collisions). Still, the common theme of a ridiculous vehicle with exactly 2 occupants sitting in the farthest possible positions from each other came to be funny to us.

Those ludicrous pavement princess pieces of junk are status symbols of conspicuous consumption, and that’s it.

Now, a pickup with tool racks or lumber in the back, or covered with drywall dust, or bearing a ranch sticker? Fine. Those make perfect sense. Anything short of that is just bragging about how much you love donating to Exxon, like an NRA sticker but dumber.

Does anyone give a fuck? People can and do have plenty of reasons not to stick to a single model of car

On a more serious note real (which is a minority) owners of bigger trucks need some serious torque for hauling.

it's a great vehicle, and I applaud the french approach to cars.

In fact it looks like the love child my Ford F350 and a Citroen C2. But it can't be because I had the Ford fixed.