I often hear Americans & rich brits justify buying oversized, polluting vehicles by claiming they need them because they live in the "countryside".
I call bullshit, Ladies and Gentlemen, allow me to introduce, the Citroen C15⬇
@jmaris this is the reason for Citroën #AK400.
The #2CV was the car for normal people like farmers or medical doctors, and the #AK400 was build for traveling craftspersons and their equipment.
Compare the size of an even bigger Citroën #HY (lenghth: 4,26 m, width: 1,99 m, height: 2,30 m) that was used as mobile store (e.g. bakery) to a smalk modern SUV for 4 people. ...
@jmaris the only thing this kind of vehicle lacks for us is three official seats...
And no, we didn't just get a pickup instead.
@jmaris the escalation of vehicle sizes is crazy, amplifying burning of the biosphere and endangering unarmoured road users even more.
So I've also done some comparisons of then and now:
"compact" skoda elroq now vs 2000's compact van Opel Zafira: the Zafira is 142 mm narrower 171 mm shorter, 1 VW beetle lighter (btw 629 and 773 kg difference, beetle from 730 kg) and you can choose btw 2 seats more with 330l less boot, 1 seat more with ~same boot and same seats but 170l more boot
@jmaris Great thread, but I'm kinda surprised about the supposed offroadability - not trying to be antagonistic, I know exactly 2 people in central Europe who, I think, use their 4WD pickups like intended, and having been in one of those, on a mountain dirt road, in the snow...
Also not sure I've ever seen one of those C15s in Germany, a shame - we're probably more Team Sprinter/van in general here for the same occasions.
@jmaris Great thread! And so true.
I did a year of forestry work in the late 90s in Germany. We were given a Renault Rapid to drive - looks like that model was a direct competitor of the Citroen C15.
It was great fun, extremely practical, very solid, and quite cheap to repair. Great car.
@jmaris Yeah you can't cross a creek after a rainstorm with that. You can't carry very much or tow anything with that either. I think your concept of country is different.
@jmaris @415S30 you can carry 3 cows in it though. If you read the thread. It carries more than a majority of SUVs. And it does great in mud. You don't do that much off-roading for an average person, even living in the countryside...and it does better in slippery terrains like snow and mud than a mini truck/SUV anyway, because among others : center of gravity. AND you can attach a trailer if you need even more space.
@PeryleneBleu @jmaris @415S30 for a while, I did forestry work in a bog lands area. Lots of forest paths, often very muddy. We had a Renault Rapid, which is very similar to the C15.
Some jobs needed tractors. The Rapid handled everything else. It’s so light that it almost never gets stuck; and if it does, you can easily push it out with a couple of people.
I grew up in highly rural France: 30 mins to nearest supermarket, many unpaved roads, really tough winters. And yet I rarely ever saw SUVs or Pick-Ups.
Because the French have understood that the C15 represents the peak of what the automobile can be. ⬇
So in this thread, I will compare the C15 to its competition on the basis of objective criteria, and prove that men who buy SUVs and Pick-Ups are, with very few exceptions, compensating for something ;)
Without further ado, the competition:⬇
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 first three models of the Ford Ranger from the 80s and 90s were not so different from your Citroen, just a simple car with a cargo platform:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/09/1993-1997_Ford_Ranger.jpg
But from the late 90s on the models grew absurdly bigger and bigger (while the cargo space became smaller and smaller)...
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