Citroen DS3: Making the most of the Top Gear COTY Award

Citroen DS3 - Top Gear COTY

Those who don’t ‘Get’ cars like to call us Petrolheads. They think it’s a disparaging term. But it’s not.

They also think that being a Petrolhead means you’re only interested in the fastest; the most expensive; the most extreme. Which is completely wrong.

What Petrolheads love is a car with soul. A car that does what it does so much better than others of its ilk. Whether that ilk be a hypercar or a family car matters not. And nothing has made that clearer in the last year than the Citroen DS3.

The Citroen DS3 should have been a miserable failure. Not too many Citroens of late have particularly floated our boat, and although the C3 on which the DS3 is based is a competent (if entirely uninspiring) car, we’d expected the DS badge to be just badge engineering – pure and simple.

But it’s not. The DS3 is a properly brilliant little car. Great to look at inside and out; great to drive on A roads or B roads or urban roads or… absolutely any roads. And even the all-singing, all-dancing version starts at just £16k.

Citroen DS3 Photo Gallery

So we’ve bigged-up the DS3 ever since we reviewed it last year. We gave it our “Best Car when you have to pay for it yourself” Award  for 2010. And Fifth Gear made the DS3 their small car of the year 2010. But in terms of marketing clout that all pales in to insignificance compared to the nod the DS3 got from Top Gear.

Top Gear made the Citroen DS3 their car of the year for 2010, once more just proving our point that it’s not necessarily the most extreme cars that get under a Petrolhead’s skin. It’s also no coincidence that those who ‘Get’ cars have made the DS3 a big favourite.

And Citroen are – quite understandably – milking that for all it’s worth. There’s even the advert (below) running every time you turn on the TV. Which is going to do the all ready terrific sales of the DS3 no harm whatsoever.

We’re now looking forward to the advert from Citroen that starts: “The Cars UK Car of the Year is not made of gold-plated carbon fibre…”

We won’t charge.

By Cars UK