New Citroen C3 Aircross aims to shake up the small SUV market with £20,240 price tag

Citroen’s all-new C3 Aircross is now available to order in the UK with petrol or hybrid power, and a choice of five and seven-seat configurations, alongside an all-electric variant, the e-C3 Aircross. 

At £21,005 with the pure-petrol engine, the seven-seat version of the C3 Aircross is one of the cheapest seven-seaters you can buy, undercutting its Vauxhall Frontera sibling (which also sits on Stellantis’ new Smart Car platform), although not the Dacia Jogger, which starts from £18,400. While the seven-seat layout is offered on the petrol and hybrid versions of the Citroen, it’s not available on the e-C3 Aircross.

The headline price of £20,240 gets you into the C3 Aircross powered by a PureTech 100 1.2-litre three-cylinder engine with 99bhp and 151Nm of torque going through a six-speed manual gearbox. That gives the small Citroen SUV a 0-62mph time of 10.6 seconds and a top speed of 111mph. Fuel efficiency for the PureTech 100 is a claimed 47.1mpg with CO2 emissions of 136g/km. 

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This edition comes only in base Plus trim, with the hybrid and electric models also offering the option of the better-equipped Max specification. As standard, the Plus gets 17-inch alloy wheels, roof rails, tinted windows, LED lights front and rear, and grey skid plates. Inside you’ll find a 10.25-inch touchscreen with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, automatic air-conditioning, Citroen’s ‘Advanced comfort’ seats, rear parking sensors and a rear camera. 

To this, Max (which costs an extra £2,000) adds wireless smartphone charging, a contrast-colour roof, a year’s subscription to Citroen’s integrated sat-nav and a heated windscreen, plus heated front seats and front parking sensors.  

Starting at £22,990, the e-C3 Aircross is one of the UK’s lowest-priced EVs. Like our 2024 Car of the Year, the Citroen e-C3, it features a 44kWh battery and a front-mounted 111bhp motor, which can launch the e-C3 Aircross from zero to 62mph in a leisurely 12.9 seconds and on to a top speed of 89mph. Maximum range for the e-C3 Aircross is understandably a little less than the smaller e-C3’s 199 miles, but Citroen claims the SUV can still do 186 miles on a charge. It only takes 26 minutes for a 20 to 80 per cent top-up at a 100kW rate, thanks to that relatively small battery. A larger-battery e-C3 Aircross will arrive later this year with around 250 miles of range. 

The hybrid C3 Aircross starts from £23,740 and features the same 1.2-litre PureTech engine as the pure-petrol car. However, here it’s mated to a six-speed dual-clutch automatic transmission with an integrated 28bhp electric motor for a total of 134bhp and 205Nm of torque. That means the hybrid model is the quickest C3 Aircross from 0-62mph, taking 10.1 seconds, and it tops out at 125mph. Plus with its ability to run on electric power and Citroen saying up to half of the Hybrid 136’s driving can be done as an EV in urban areas, the hybrid is unsurprisingly more frugal than the pure-petrol model with a combined consumption of 53.3mpg and CO2 emissions of 121g/km. 

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