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The C15 represents a time when a vehicle was a tool. I feel vehicles want to turn into a subscription service these days.

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.

> The C15 represents a time when a vehicle was a tool. I feel vehicles want to turn into a subscription service these days.

I wonder how differently cars would be built, if instead of maximizing for value extraction and crap nobody needs, they instead were optimized for utility and maintenance (and sure, fuel economy, aerodynamics and some sane environmental stuff). Like take the C15 and add 2-4 decades of manufacturing and safety improvements, while keeping it simple and utilitarian.

Modern cars break down less than older cars -- they are more reliable, not less. They generate more power, with better emissions. They have a wealth of creature comforts and features beyond what 1980s cars had.
> If your C15 breaks down in a field, you can fix it with a wrench.

I could. My wife couldn't.

Also, let's not forget the creature comforts of modern cars... rear seats, airbags, sound insulation, power steering, automatic transmissions, 4wd.

Living in the country, tool-vehicles are very useful. This is typically a beat up old 2wd pickup truck (lower is easier to load) with an 8-ft bed (so you can load full sheets of plywood) and a single cab (so you can get an 8-ft bed). My buddy down the street has one and I borrow it all the time. But you'd never take the family anywhere with this thing. It basically spends its entire life going back and forth to Lowes.

This article is comparing a C15 new in 1984 vs a secondhand one today. Really, the C15 represents a time when taxes were ~20% lower and there was a workable steel industry in Europe (which destroyed certain environments, especially around the Ruhrgebiet, whether the exact location was in France, Belgium or Germany). Oh and one major problem the C15 does have is that despite those stats, it is considered to NOT meet emission standards (due to age), and so you cannot enter many cities in one. You can enter with a Berlingo.

There is still a "C15" by the way. It's even less ugly. It's called the Berlingo [1]. Cheapest version is 24000euro + tax, or 35000 + tax for the hybrid version. Let's say in practice it'll run you 30000 euro.

In other words, after tax and counting inflation, let's summarize that since 1984, European cars have about doubled in price. Wages in the EU have gone up about 2x, after inflation.

You have to work 30000/2600 (avg wage per month, euros, in France) = just shy of an entire year of work if you invested 100% of your wage into the car. So let's say 2 years of work.

(due to the EU strongly opposing equal wages across the EU, there is a very large difference between average wage in France and, say, Greece. VERY large, more than 100%)

In 1977, you would have 4900FF average wage in France (in French Francs), and the C15 cost 62000FF. So, just about 12 months at 100% average wage, or let's say 2 years or work, saving up.

So, it even costs about the same.

And, sadly, one is forced to admit that when it comes to European cars, this is a pretty damn good result for that company. Most EU brands have done far worse.

[1] https://www.citroen.fr/vehicules/utility/Berlingo-Van.html

My driving skills are probably below average. I really like that my car warns me of zebra crossings and can follow the car in front of me with a safe distance.

Many of the modern car features are just useless marketing fluff, but there is some really good progress too.

> The C15 represents a time when a vehicle was a tool. I feel vehicles want to turn into a subscription service these days.

The same cancer that turned technology from a tool to an ad delivery machine is affecting vehicles.

Many of the things are also there because of regulation.

eg: https://www.forbes.com/sites/edgarsten/2024/07/01/mandated-a...

You have cameras, sensors, gps, maps, that need to be updated... and all that would easily be solved by a few policemen with radar guns and writing fines.

> If your Range Rover breaks down in a field

Do they go there?

I mostly see those in parking lots occupying two spaces (a white one 4, once) or cruising slowly in narrow high streets.

Century of the Self. Products aren't life-improving tools anymore they're a way to express yourself.
> 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.

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.

I can confirm all of the findings.

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.

How casually people here are ignoring NOx and especially PM2.5. It has no DPF (Diesel Particulate Filter). You are emitting more than 200 times the amount of pm2.5 than a modern diesel. source:https://www.nanoparticles.ch/archive/2011_May_PR.pdf https://aaqr.org/articles/aaqr-20-02-oa-0081

Also this car has only has 60hp.

The French seem to be very thoughtful people who solved multiple pesky problems permanently:

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.

I know it's a joke, but if you clip a curb or even a slightly chunky branch at 15mph in one of these EVERYONE DIES (...only partially joking)

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.

I had a Renault Kangoo and was similarly militant about its supremacy. It was a cheap, reliable thing and people carrier. It could fit five people, or two people, two bicycles and plenty of camping gear. It was cheap and ugly enough to shrug about cosmetic damage, so I never worried about kicking the doors shut or sitting on the roof. It was also tiny and easy to drive and park. It was mechanically simple and reliable.

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.

Most people who live in rural Britain today are still getting around in hatchbacks or estates (station wagons, to use the American term). The enormous SUVs are almost entirely driven by people who've used their money to buy into the countryside aesthetic.
Genuine question: what about the NOx?

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.

He's mixing US/UK vs France and 1985 vs 2025.

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.

My favorite C15 story is with my childhood friend who got it as a hand-me-down first car, we used to put plastic lawn chairs in the back and head to the beach...

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..

First off, I agree with the point made, though I think a more reasonable comparison would be something like a subaru. The people I know who have to deal with excessive snow or mud on country roads commonly opt for that. Of course there’s the “men” who compensate for their lack of buldge with 350s, dualies, etc. If you don’t work a farm, those whips are dummm.

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.

In Italy we had similar memes for the (old) Fiat Panda 4x4
>prove that men who buy SUVs and Pick-Ups are, with very few exceptions, compensating for something ;)

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?

Brits are no strangers to the Citroen C15 as the article seems to imply. We liked them.

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.

It's a global pandemic of oversized cars. People love SUVs because it makes them feel powerful and successful. Explanations why they need them are generally along the lines of "because we have kids" (but SUVs don't actually have that much space), or "because heavier means safer" (well yes, at the cost of others).
Sorry for going counter to the narrative, but I had a friend who had an early 2000s Citroen which was made around the time when French cars had the worst reputation - and I tell you, by the stories he told, they deserved it.

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.

A 1980s Toyota Hilux would give it a run for its money

https://youtu.be/Yl1FNX08HFc

Designed in the era of Use-maxing vs Status-maxing. I think modern cars are taking a lot of car experience out and putting in the phone experience in. My Maruti Suzuki 800 was such a fun car to drive. Easy to repair. Decently efficient. Repair manual was understandable.

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

The Peugeot XUD engine that powers the Citroën C15 (and a whole bunch of other European cars of similar vintage) is what most of the small Ford diesels were based on, right until they got into the "wet belt" nonsense.

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.

That's hilarious. The German version (VW Caddy) is similar. Citroen at some point had a van version of the 2CV and the Diane, this is the continuation of that tradition.
I love small cars, in fact I owned a Fiat 500 for a number of years and a number of small VWs. With that said, it really grinds my gears (Pun intended) when Europeans want to lecture Americans about large cars.

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.

My dad got rid of his C15 after driving 1 million kilometers with it (rural France) The engine was fine surprisingly, the body was rusted to the bone though
I always had BMWs, like I only ever bought reasonably high-end BMWs, but when we bought our place in Ireland, I needed a vehicle on Swiss plates and insurance (for legal reasons) to use there when car rental in Ireland was running crazy money. I had a look on the Swiss classifieds sites for anything "rechtslenker" (right-hand drive) and found two Rolls Royces, a clapped out MG, and about 15 yellow ex-Swiss Post Renault Kangoo 2-seat car-based cargo vans. (I guess they wanted their mailmen to be able to step out onto the curb, hence RHD in a LHD country?) I bought the van. Weird config: right hand drive, but configured for right-hand traffic, meaning I had to replace the headlights and fog light and get it re-aligned to fit in. Automatic transmission, 1.6L petrol engine, no airbag, no wheel lock, no AC, knobs and switches, glass all around like the MPV version, but a cargo floor. It's insanely simple, the parts are practically free from the perspective of a BMW fanatic, and it's actually a hoot to drive. When we moved, I imported it with our stuff, and it's our only car now. Hauls firewood like you wouldn't believe, and tows a large 2.5m x 1.25m x 1.2m single-axle box trailer without complaints, meaning I can (and have done) shift all the sheets of plywood and drywall I need without buying a pickup. We live way out in the countryside, where the roads have grass up the middle and potholes down both sides, but the Kangoo's ground clearance is enough (especially when empty) that it's never been an issue. I hardly miss the BMW. A little French van is all you need.
This thread is so sad. A population in decline.
Absolutely true. It's even the subject of many memes! search for "c15 memes".
Off topic: That comma in the title really grates on me. It's supposed to be "dramatic pause" or something, but it can also be read as "pause while I check my notes to remember what the name of this thing actually is".

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

I dream about a newer car like this. I know it’s rough out there with subscription service for seat heating and over engineered overpriced unreasonably large cars being the norm, but maybe there is a niche where pragmatism survived? A Toyota maybe? Anyone know?
To be fair to the SUV they weren't really a thing in France before 2 decades after the C15. To be fair to the C15 the main buyers of SUV at the beginning were urban and suburban moms that wanted to show they had money and we're feeling better in big and tall cars
You know all those dark patterns in software? What if we applied the same concepts to gigantic mechanical devices, taking advantage of human psychological faults, and generate a profit margin on those? Sure seems what seems to have happened with motor vehicles
I still prefer the older classic CX or DS. Nothing compared to them. Casteljau also has a word. (Bezier worked for Renault, but Casteljau made the Bernstein ponynomials popular)
In Poland it was Polonez Caro: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FSO_Polonez
Can't imagine producing and selling this under the current regulations (and not just the crash-worthiness). I with they and C15 move towards each other...
My family hired https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Izh_2715 in eastern Europe to move furniture few times. It was usually referred as "Pirojok", which can be translated as stuffed bun.
I’ve been a passenger in the front and the back of a C15 and they are pure utility vehicule. You get heating in winter and ventilation in summer. The windows are manual, front seat are okay, and I don’t know if they have updated models with aircon before stopping the production.
> But what if you're an environmentally conscious mother who needs to drive the 5 minute walk to your kids' school? Surely, a modern car must be less polluting?

> CO2 emissions/km:

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

In that spirit, France is now doing the Bagnole https://kilow.com/en/pages/la-bagnole
The Ranger is now a midsize truck. A better comparison is the hybrid Maverick.
Asking seriously, what is holding us from creating these masterpieces again?
This song is not about C15, but is quite appropriate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzDg-1lEaD8