Citroen C2 VTR

[Smudge]

Having spent two weeks living with one whilst on Holiday in Crete, I felt suitably impressed with our hire car to write a review.

The car only has four seats, and to be honest, any family with children approaching their teens may want to look for something a little bigger, but for me, Ruth, Ellie (7) and Alex (5) the C2 was plenty big enough. The car comes well equipped with a nice sporty looking body kit (sporty enough to make the penis feel big enough on holiday), aircon, adjustable steering column for both reach & rake, height adjustable seats with good side bolsters adding to the comfort and nice poky 1.4l engine, which had enough oomph to get you out and about for a holiday, even when fully laden with 4 people & suitcases.

Other nice touches include the trip computer which includes a petrol gauge letting you know how far till you need to fill up (something even an R32 doesn't get! ) as well as al the other normal trip computer type stuff, electric front windows, electric wing mirrors, independent front & rear fog lights (for the boy racers out there) and adjustable rear seats which would increase / decrease leg room in the back, and therefore increase / decrease space in the boot.

The radio was near on useless, when you did eventually find a station, it was normally local Greek stuff that would bore the kids stupid, but it also had a CD player, very handy when you don’t have any CD’s to hand! The power steering is great. Very light when required and therefore made parallel parking on some of Crete’s steep hills a lot easier than normal. The car also had a heat-reflecting windscreen, which did actually help in keeping the car cool having been parked up by the beach for a day, and even if it was hot, the aircon made easy work of cooling things down inside.

My one gripe with the car was its brakes. They car was supposed to have ABS, yet on about 5 occasions when I did have to brake quite hard, they appeared to lock up rather then perform like an ABS system normally would. And when ABS was called upon, the brake pedal seemed to lock down momentarily when applied, but always popped back up after a second. It may have just been a fault, but one that didn’t seem too right when it happened.

IIRC, the car cost around £300 for the 2 weeks, and was booked through Avis. The one thing I will add is, we didn’t specify a car with Aircon, thinking we’d just wind down the windows if needs be. The C2 VTR is a Group B car, and if we’d specified aircon we would have moved up to a Group C car, adding an additional £80. For something the car already had!! But bar the brakes (which really was a minor thing, it didn’t freak me that much) and the potentially cheeky aircon charge, I felt the C2 VTR was a cracking option as a holiday rental car.

Sorry about the number plate, but this was the best I could find, ours was this colour red too you see.

[sayerbloke]

In terms of small cars, I really like the look of those

[Thorburn]

Does the VTR have the Sensotronic (or whatever they call it) gearbox?

If so how did you find it?

[Smudge]

Not sure if the VTR does as an optional extra, but my hire car was just a standard 5 speed manual.

[DHA]

Think its the VTS that has this as standard. Or it did anyway

[Thorburn]

I thought in the UK it was the VTR that had the semi-auto, then the limited edition GT was simply a VTR with manual box....

Probably just a difference in the forgein spec

[Thorburn]

Yet, just checked the Citroen website, in the UK the VTR is only available with 5-speed Sensodrive and the GT is no longer available.

Meaning that a European spec one would actually be a much better car than the UK spec one if what I've read about sensodrive is true!

[Snail]

I was always baffled by them putting sensodrive on it, the old VTR/VTS was about the most modified car around, they were again aiming for the youth market, so why, on the model most likely to get modified, do they put a gearbox that prevents engine modifications?

The french are brilliant at building FWD chassis, and i've heard these are no exception!

[Thorburn]

Because lets face it most of them do naff all to the engine and I believe the VTS has a standard manual.

Plus I'd imagine the paddleshift, even if its not that great, has a 'cool' factor amongst all the boy racers.

[Tomk]

the thing is the old VTR saxo was quicker and felt nippy, and the VTS was a quick car... the new c2's are slow as anything...