It’s being reported that the Citroen DS3 convertible will arrive in 2013 with a Fiat 500-style sliding cloth roof and a new name – the Citroen DS3 AirFlow.
As regular readers can’t have failed to notice over the last year or so, the Citroen DS3 is one of our favourite cars. In fact so good is the DS3 we gave it our ‘Best Car when you have to pay for it yourself Award’ in our round-up of the best cars of 2010.
For a car based on the dreary – if competent – Citroen C3, the DS3 is a revelation. It’s fleet of foot (well, tyre), goes where you point it, looks great outside and even better inside. It’s everything you could want in a small car – and then some.
And it goes without saying that with a car this successful Citroen are, at some point, going to chop the top off and make a DS3 Convertible. A fact from the school of the bleedin’ obvious, as we said when What Car? reported to the world last year that the DS3 Convertible was coming. You don’t say?
But now we get a bit more meat to stick on the bones of the story – this time from Auto Week in the Netherlands – with news that the convertible DS3 will arrive in 2013. Fortunately, there’s a bit more detail.
Just like the Fiat 500, the DS3 convertible looks set to get a cross between a sunroof and a drop-top with a sliding cloth roof that folds back leaving the side windows and door frames in place, which is both cheaper and more rigid. A bit like a landaulette, but one that opens the whole car, not just the back.
Not only will the DS3 convertible arrive in 2013 with a landaulette-style roof, but it will come with a new name – the Citroen DS3 AirFlow.
And it’ll sell like hot-cakes.
Source: Auto Week NL



David says
I’d go one further, if you are going to take the roof off, why not do it completely, either making a DS3 Pluriel (a car for the Mediterranean beaches) or a proper DS3 Roadster, with rakish windscreen, two seats and a simple fold-down roof which hides beneath a completely flat rear deck.
There is so much imagination showing in the DS3, so there should be just as much imagination going into the variants, and not just copying what other manufacturers are doing…..
percy says
Wholeheartedly agree that the Citroen DS3 is a very good car. But surely taking the roof off will just turn it in to a style statement? Leave it alone, Citroen.