Citroen Ami Review & Prices

The Citroen Ami is like a toy car broke out of the local shop, picked up the electric motor from a washing machine on the way out, and set off into the big world to try and be a ‘real car.’ It’s not quite a real car, though, as the in-car tech isn’t much better than you’d get from Matchbox or Hot Wheels…

It’s hard to be hard on the Ami, simply because it’s so cute and comes across as being so plucky. Really, it’s not a car at all, but is technically a quadricycle and is aimed mostly at the French car market, where a quirk of the rules means that people as young as 14 can drive one of these. The UK market kind of got caught up in the massive publicity surrounding the Ami, which is why it’s here, and why Fiat will also bring in the similar Topolino (although Vauxhall has no plans to rebadge Opel’s version, the Rocks-e). 

The whole point of the Ami is that it’s cheap and durable, so the doors are the same on both sides (you can swap them around, which is why the hinges are on the front on one side, and at the back  on the other) while the headlights and brake lights are simple round items which pop into the same fixings.

Citroen decided that it wouldn’t be worth the cost of setting the Ami up for right-hand drive, as that would make it pointlessly expensive, so it’s left-hand drive only, with the driver’s side accessed through the rear-hinged door. That’s OK, because the Ami will only ever be driven in town, and also because you’re surrounded by glass on all sides, making all-round visibility a doddle (which is also why there’s no rear-view mirror — just swivel your head). 

The cabin is spectacularly basic, mostly because the Ami was designed to be used by on-street car rental services, so it’s basically hose-out. The seats look like school chairs, but they’re actually pretty comfy, and there’ lots of space for bags and suchlike. There’s a simple digital speedo and range indicator, but if you want entertainment you’ll have to supply your own speaker or headphones.

There’s space for a suitcase on the floor of the passenger side, but not much else, although there are some storage spaces and a shelf below the windscreen. It’s not really a practical car, the Ami, but it’s OK for small shopping trips or urban school runs. 

Specifically urban school runs, though. Technically, you could drive an Ami on the motorway, but with a 28mph top speed it’s going to be pretty scary. There’s a tiny 8hp electric motor, which gives the Ami acceleration of 7.4 seconds… to get to 25mph. Still, it’s fine around town as long as you don’t accidentally wander into a 50mph zone…

The 5.4kWh battery is tiny, so the range is just 46 miles at best, but the tiny size pays off because the battery can be charged back up in just four hours from a three-pin domestic socket, and the Ami even has its own built-in charging cable.

There’s almost no suspension to speak of, so you’ll feel every bump and lump thumping up through that plastic body, but the Ami genuinely is quite good fun to drive, and it’s still rare enough that everyone who sees one smiles at it. 

The best bit is how easy it is to thread through town, and you’ll be searching out London Cabs to show off that you can turn even more tightly than they can, thanks to the Ami’s tiny 7.2 metre turning circle (a Cab takes 7.6 metres to turn around). Few things are as much fun as flinging an Ami around a mini-roundabout.

OK, so the Ami is tiny, noisy, impractical, slow, and won’t actually go very far. Which makes it sound like the worst car ever. And it is, if you compare it to a similarly-priced second hand small hatchback, but that’s not the point. The Ami is designed specifically for short hops, around town, using minimal resources. It’s not a proper car, but it is really good fun. 

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In one sense, an Ami is really cheap, coming in at well under £10,000, and being spectacularly cheap to run. It currently has no direct rival, as Fiat UK still hasn’t started selling the Topolino (which is identical under the skin) and Renault has abandoned the tandem-two-seat Twizy (which was even more basic but at least had a 50mph top speed).

The problem with the Ami comes when you start comparing it to what you could get in the used car market for the same money, at which point cars such as the Dacia Sandero, the Citroen C3, and the Ford Fiesta start to pop up on your radar. While they can’t match the smile-factor of the Ami, and nor are they emissions-saving electric models, they are at least proper cars which can all be driven wherever you want to go with ease and in safety. At that point, the Ami is revealed for what it is; an expensive toy.

The Ami is fun to chuck around city streets, and it’s spectacularly manoeuvrable, but it’s totally out of its depth anywhere else. 

In town

On city streets, especially those with 20mph zones, the Ami feels like the best idea in motoring for a long time. You sit side-by-side with your passenger, with a superb view out, almost no overhangs at the front or rear (so no need for parking sensors) and a turning circle that you can measure almost with the span of your hands. The Ami really does raise a smile — both from yourself and from others — when you drive it around town. Parking is stupidly easy, even with the left-hand drive and the lack of a rear-view mirror, and the tiny door mirrors. It’s so small, the Ami will actually fit into a supermarket trolley bay… 

However, there are limitations even in-town. The ride quality is really quite terrible, so even small lumps in the tarmac — like a rumble strip — send a big ‘whump’ up through the plastic body and chassis. The whole structure of the Ami seems to resonate like a smacked drum on bigger bumps. While visibility is good, there’s only one windscreen wiper and it only works on the driver’s side, so there’s a huge area of screen left un-swept. 

The slow performance and low top speed aren’t a huge problem on small streets, but you do need to watch your driving and plan ahead for hills, as long uphill stretches will make the Ami slow down a lot, and sadly there’s no way of catching up on the downslope, as that 28mph speed limiter will cut in and actually use the braking effect of the electric motor to stop your downhill fun.  

On the motorway

Technically, you could  take the Ami on a motorway, but you really shouldn’t. Really, don’t try it. For a start, with that 28mph maximum, you’ll be a tiny, hard-to-see, rolling menace to everyone else, while inside the Ami you’ll be buffeted by every passing vehicle’s side-draughts, and deafened by the noise coming up from underneath. Deafened, too, by the loud air horns of passing lorries. That 46 mile range will disappear fast if you’re holding the accelerator pedal down all the time, so you might not even make it between junctions. Anyway, while technically the Ami exceeds the minimum power limit of 4kW for motorway use, equally technically the police could nick you for failing to keep up with the flow of traffic, so don’t try it.  

On a twisty road

The Ami is actually fine on slow, narrow country roads, aside from that almost-solid ride quality. Hit a pot-hole and you’ll swear you’ve ripped a wheel off (and indeed, you might have…)  but within its narrow limits, the Ami would be perfectly fine for a short rural trip. 

The suspension is surprisingly sophisticated, with McPherson struts up front, and semi-trailing arms with coil-over shocks on the back, just like a big, proper car. Which doesn’t mean that the ride quality is anything other than dog-rough. 

The problem, again, would be that low top speed and the small size when the speed limit opens up to 50mph or 60mph, at which point you’ve become something of a liability to yourself and others. Mind you, the Ami is so small that it’s almost as easy to drive backwards as it is forwards, which is a form of entertainment all in itself. 

Considering how tiny it is, the Ami is reasonably practical, although you have to make the choice between carrying luggage or a passenger. 

There is some useful stowage space in the Ami, thanks to a broad, concave dashboard, whereby the space between the instruments and the windscreen is filled with useful little multi-purpose trays that include cup holders and small lidded compartments (which reflect annoyingly in that vast windscreen). It’s all very basic, as you might expect, but a good use of the available space.

The Ami has possibly the biggest door-bins we’ve ever seen. They’re deep and wide, and use a net to hold things in place, so they actually stretch a little if you need to stuff something big in. A big handbag, a backpack, or a laptop bag will fit in easily. There’s also a little clip-on bag hook on the passenger side, and space in front of the passenger seat for luggage or larger items (or, y’know, the passenger’s legs and feet). For a tiny two-seat car, the Ami is actually pretty practical, even given the total lack of any external storage areas. There is an optional ‘Cargo Kit’ which gives you some hooks, nets, and panels so that the interior can be set up for maximum possible storage. 

The Citroen Ami is incredibly cheap and basic inside, but that’s kind of the point. 

The phrase that comes to mind when you see the Ami’s interior is ‘hose-out.’ There’s so much simple plastic on show that it almost looks like one of those made-in-one-mould pod bathrooms that you get in some cheap hotels. It’s staggeringly basic — there aren’t even detentes to keep the doors open on a slope or on a windy day. 

Then again, you get what you need. Aside from possibly the ugliest steering wheel in existence, here’s a small digital display (circa. 1990) which shows your speed, range, and battery level. There are buttons for hazard lights, windscreen demisting, and a regular column stalks (recognisable from old Citroen models, those). There’s a USB socket for charging your phone, but it’s an old Type-A socket, so choose your cable carefully. There’s no stereo, but there is storage space behind the dinky instrument panel for you to stash a Bluetooth speaker, although it’ll need to be a powerful one to compete with the racket in the Ami’s plastic-bucket cabin. There’s a clip that holds your phone in place, so that it can be your infotainment screen, but larger-screen phones might not fit, and it’s not fitted as standard on the basic model. The gear selector is down by your thighs, next to the seat. 

The windows don’t wind down, but instead have simple flip-up sections, rather like those of an old Citroen 2CV. That’s your air conditioning. There is a basic heater, but it’s noisy and not especially effective. The seats are simple affairs with two vinyl cushions each, but they’re actually surprisingly comfy. The driver’s seat adjusts back and forth, but the passenger’s seat is fixed in place. 

One nice stylistic touch is that the interior door handles are simple fabric straps, which you pull to pop the catch — a neat race-car-style effect in the cheap and cheerful Ami.

All Amis use the same injection-moulded blue-grey plastic inside and out, but you can upgrade that with different stickers and wheel trims if you go for the pricier Colour or Peps versions.

The Ami isn’t so much cheap to run as practically free. If you’re charging the 5.4kWh battery on night-rate electricity, you might pay as little as 54p for a full charge, capable of carrying you for 46 miles, well within the range of most people’s commutes (motorways excepted…). There’s no need for a home charging box either, just a regular outdoor socket will do, as the Ami comes with its own retracting charging cable with a three-pin plug (and an adaptor so you can charge it from kerbside EV charging points using a Type-2 cable). There’s no tax to pay, as it’s zero emissions. 

The Ami qualifies as a quadricycle, so it doesn’t have to pass the same rigorous crash tests as normal road cars, and so the best advice would be to simply not have a crash in the first place. At least any crash that does take place will be at very low speeds, but there’s no airbag for either occupant, so you’ve only got the seatbelts to protect you. On balance, that’s probably enough given the Ami’s limited speed range, but it feels a bit naked when you get in for the first time. There are exterior locks for the doors, but being as the windows flip up to open, is there really even much point in locking them?

The Ami hasn’t been on sale for long enough for us to get a good idea of how reliable it might be, but then again what is there to go wrong? At worst, you might have to fix a blown fan fuse, or replace a smashed headlight. The Ami has a standard two-year warranty, while the battery is warrantied for three years. There’s an option to extend the warranty out to five years at a cost. Citroen also offers its own specialist insurance for the Ami, as many other providers might not give you a quote for such an esoteric car.

Citroen finished a very creditable fifth overall in the most recent Auto Express Driver Power Survey, with only 15 per cent of owners reporting faults with their cars.