Citroen reveals crowdsourced C1 Connexion

Hot on the heels of the Volkswagen People's Car project comes Citroen revealing the result of its own crowdsourced design.

While Volkwagen’s project looked at entire vehicle designs – and was flooded with submissions from 119,000 keen Chinese participants – Citroen has restricted their crowdsourcing to just the C1’s spec and fit-out details.

More than 24,000 Citroen fans submitted ideas for the little car, using a special configurator app on the French brand’s UK web page. The result is the C1 Connexion that has been revealed as an image – but Citroen says will be built and sold. There were also about 10,000 entries in a competition to win one when it does hit the showroom floor.

The app incorporated a virtual ‘factory floor’ that allowed entrants to choose body styles, details, colours and accents for the C1 connexion, which will be built on the new Citroen C1 1.0i manual-transmission city car sold in Europe.

The most popular result was a three-door body in Caldera Black with Scarlett Red accents and more stylish alloy wheels, adding to the C1’s existing trim that includes LED daytime running lights. However, don’t expect to see the C1 here. Citroen importer Ateco Automotive has already said there is no chance of seeing it here, partly on its size but also because government policy makes the car too expensive.

“There isn’t a market for a car at that size at the price we’d be able to offer it,” Ateco spokesman Edware Rowe says. “It’s a very small car by Australian standards and because Australia has no tax rebate based on carbon emissions, it would be just as expensive as larger cars like the Citroen C3. In Europe, buyers enjoy enormous tax advantages offered to low emissions cars, and of course none of that applies here at all.

Rowe says the Australian government stance needs to change for “a while host of reasons”, pointing out that Australia is the last mature market in the world not to have a tax system based on emissions, fuel economy and engine size. “Essentially what that says quite clearly is that the government hasn’t thought through an integrated car taxation policy with an emissions policy, and the effect of that is two-fold.

“On one hand there’s no encouragement to buy cars with better fuel economy, but equally it stops high technology vehicles with better fuel economy and lower emissions coming to Australia. Carmakers build more expensive technology in the knowledge that the tax benefits in other markets will make them affordable for the buyer.”

Rowe says the Australian government stance prevents that technology being available to the Australian public, and the Gillard government’s carbon tax will not help the situation. “The carbon tax does absolutely nothing to encourage people to drive fuel-efficient and lower emission cars. What Australia is crying out for is a graduated tax based on economy and CO2 emissions.”