The 2024 edition of the Paris Motor Show was an opportunity for Citroën to present a largely revamped range of vehicles and a clear vision of what the brand is preparing for the future. From the Ami to the C5 Aircross concept, Citroën has shown that daring is still at the heart of its values in terms of design and aerodynamics.
Ami 2025: a completely new face
Launched in September 2020 without any sales target, the Citroën Ami has exceeded all expectations with unexpected uses and a commercial success with more than 65,000 units sold in Europe and beyond. On the occasion of its fourth anniversary, the Citroën Ami is also revising its style, giving it a new personality, which is necessary at a time when competition from the Mobilize Duo and other Fiat Topolinos is increasing.
For its restyling, Citroën decided to give the Ami a completely new front end, with the headlights raised instead of the lowered indicators. Ami smiles even more with a large, slightly sloping capsule that incorporates the brand's new logo, here in infrared red. The restyling continued on the wings, which were given artificial stripes reminiscent of the 2CV, thus establishing a more direct link between the two models, both of which made mobility affordable.
The exterior changes ended with completely redesigned wheel trims, which took up the shape of a golf ball with the Citroën logo off-centre. Inside, the changes are much more subtle with the new logo on the dashboard and that's it.
Finally, the redesigned Ami will arrive at the brand's dealerships in the first half of the year. Its appearance has been completely changed to make it more competitive in the face of tougher competition. It remains to be seen whether the public will like these changes.
Citroën C4: transfigured
When it was launched in 2020, the third generation Citroën C4 surprised the world with a concept halfway between a saloon and an SUV that allowed it to adopt a unique stance on the road, a stance that still distinguishes it 4 years later.
However, while it introduced the Citroën style of the CXpérience concept, the C4 received a lot of criticism, particularly at the front, where the headlights were considered too spherical, while the rear was criticised for its complexity.
Citroën's restyling was based on the desire to simplify the car's design and make it look wider, while at the same time incorporating the brand's new style from the Oli concept. The front of the car has also been completely redesigned, with the headlights now very thin and tinted black to blend in with the grille, while the brand's new visual signature has been renewed with, still, three light segments, but now all placed horizontally to give the car more width.
At the rear, it's a revolution as the brand has significantly simplified the lights, which no longer go as far as the foot of the quarter panel and take up the three horizontal light points.
Here too, the changes to the interior are lighter, with the new logo on the steering wheel and a new 7-inch instrument cluster on the Max version only. Finally, the CAFE 2025 standards require that the C4 abandons the thermal engines to offer only hybrid and electric engines, with the 1.2 Turbo 130 remaining in the catalogue, but only as a call version.
To sum up, the Paris Motor Show was an opportunity for the brand's two 2020 models to completely rethink their style, not by aiming for banality, but on the contrary by asserting their personality more strongly in order to stand out more and more from an increasingly fierce competition. But the C4 and ami are not the only new models to be transformed; see you in a few days for the next parts of this retrospective.
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