Citroen C2 VTS | Shed of the Week
Shed finally gets round to indulging in a mid-morning French Fancy
Shed thought he was reasonably up to speed on economics but the stuff that's happening these days is making him wonder. His doubts started last week when Mrs Shed told him that a ready-made lasagne (her posh meal of choice) had somehow managed to remain at the same £7 mark since 2011, despite the prices of the staple foods that go into those ready meals (like pasta) having shot up by around 130 percent in the last year alone.
In the field of secondhand vehicles where Shed feels more comfortable, especially if the postmistress is in the field with him, UK prices have risen by 30 percent over the last twelve months. Shed isn't sure that the Office of National Statistics' data bucket dips anywhere near the '£1,500 and below' level that he covers in Shed of the Week, but he is old and ugly enough to realise that the shortage of twin-turbo JDM classics, V8 behemoths and Busso V6 Alfas that used to populate his column is not the result of any sudden economic change. In Shed's opinion it simply reflects a gradual increase in the number of deluded folk who believe that they suddenly own something massively valuable.
Luckily, there are still a few people around who take a more realistic view on the value of their old motors. Whether you consider the vendor of this final-year Citroen C2 VTS to be one of them will depend on your view on their £1,290 asking price.
The car has done 96,000 miles in just over 12 years, a reasonable 8,000 a year. There is service history but we're not told how much. The current MOT certificate is valid until August and has no advisories on it. The only notes on previous tests related to tyre and brake consumables.
One thing these VTSs aren't is common. This is only the third one that Shed has unearthed in the last five years. Their rarity on the roads could be down to the C2's asymettric-depth side window design, created in Citroen's case by a bloke called Coco and famously not popularised by the Daihatsu YRV or Skoda Roomster. Unlike those two, the Citroen achieved this undesirable effect by providing deeper rear windows, boosting the view for those in the back rather than reducing it for those in the front. That's a point in its favour.
Another one is the C2's split tailgate which allows you to perch on its lower section, Range Rover style, while enjoying a chukka or two at your local inner-city polo match. Even with two stout strings holding it up it's probs best to be more of a whippet than a whale though, and mind your leg on the length of brown pipe that passes for an exhaust while you're at it.
Inside, the cabin is primo plastico with jazzy (check spelling) seat material, a Honda S2000-style instrument pod with arc tacho and LCD speedo, and a sweat-melted steering wheel rim that you could only adjust for height. You could slide the individual rear seats forward to boost the meagre 193 litres of boot space or backwards to boost your chances of getting off with someone, but the awkward process of inserting yourself into the rear compartment is a potential passion-killer as Shed will personally confirm.
The other thing against the the VTS version of the C2 was performance that should have been better for a titchy car with a 121hp 1.6 litre engine under its bonnet. At 1,084kg it did feel lardy compared to the preceding 935kg Saxo VTS, most of whose owners seemed to prefer agility, spriteliness and a sweeter helm over the C2's 4-star crash protection, over-assisted steering and standard ABS on post-'04 models. The C2's gearbox wasn't a masterpiece either, not just in terms of shift action but also in ratios. You needed three of them to hit the 62mph point from zero after an uneventful-feeling 8.3sec. That equated to 8.0sec for the 0-60. The Saxo did that in 7.6sec.
Let's look at the positives though by reverting to economics for a minute. The C2 VTS sat in a surprisingly low insurance bracket, it averaged over 40mpg, and best of all as far as Shed is concerned the sudden and inexplicable unpopularity of cake has driven the village postmistress's home-made fondant fancies down to a new low, so he will be going long on those.
Gassing Station | General Gassing | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff