WheelTronix

Citroen’s outstanding GT super car notion is to make its first appearance in UK on the 1.16-mile Goodwood Hill during this year’s Festival of Speed taking place between July 3 and 5.

This demo run is not the first time for the GT by Citroën as the car has finished laps of honour at both the Nürburgring and Le Mans 24-hour survival races.

The car had made its first appearance at the Paris Motor Show in October 2008. Citroën and Polyphony, architect of the driving replication game Gran Turismo5 on the PlayStation 3, revealed the imitation of the digital vehicle and impressed the crowd with its innovative looks and high-tech technology.

The size of the car is almost 5 metres long (4.96m), and is only a metre more in height which is 1.09m. It has a big coil of windscreen that falls into the roof and on the rear mobile surface.

Citroen is sincerely in view of producing a variant of its eco-car concept, the C-Cactus.

The C-Cactus notion was first introduced at Frankfurt Motor Show in 2007. The first C-Cactus featured a trimmed interior without any dashboard and a diesel or electric power train.

The goal of Citroen is to develop an uncomplicated, lightweight less carbon car with minimum parts. This variant of C-Cactus if allowed to be manufactured then it will probably feature a 3 cylinder sub-100g/km petrol engine with stop and start technology.

The C-Cactus conception that came out at Frankfurt had a diesel-electric intercrossed power train with a 70bhp diesel engine and 30bhp electric motor giving 83mpg and carbon dioxide expelling of barely 78g/km.

Its top speed was only 93mph and it had fitted in it an electric-only mode for zero-discharges when it runs at low speeds. It had many elements of a usual counterpart and several parts were made from cast-off materials.

Citroen is bringing in a new cashback scheme to encourage the substitution of older cars with neater and better equipped new ones.

According to the Citroen’s Trade-In Incentive Scheme the company will disburse £2,000 to customers who register for a vehicle.
The trade-in cashbacks are presented apart from all existing Citroen deals. The Citroen Trade-In Incentive Scheme will be liable to all new cars. This scheme is excluded for C1, C2, C3, C3 Pluriel, C3 Picasso and Berlingo First Multispace. The moneyback policy can be used towards any deposit.

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PSA Peugeot-Citroen will cut over 11,000 jobs this year, with the 1st superfluousnesses in European factories outside France.

This is in addition to the loss of 2,700 jobs late last year. The company had incurred a loss of €343 million last year.
PSA’s plants in Slovakia and the Czech Republic are the first affected. The prioritizing of jobs in France has been helped by President Nicolas Sarkozy’s proclamation of a €3billion loan to PSA to guard French employees.

The European Commission also has sanctioned a €1.7million package to assist jobless auto industry workers in the Castilla y Leon and Aragon regions of Spain. Over 1,080 workers from12 firms have been struck in these deprived areas and unions have enforced to the EU under a scheme which funds for training of individuals made surplus.

Citroen is extending ‘Airdream+’ exceptional edition versions of its C3 and C4.

The C3 Airdream+ will have 1.4 HDI (70bhp) diesel engines which give 64.2mpg and 115g/km of carbon dioxide – and its equipment includes air conditioning, electric windows, rear parking sensors and 15-inch alloy wheels. The price starts from £10,995.
The C4 Airdream+ the price starting from £13,895 is based on the normal 5 door 1.6 HDI SX, with extra parking sensors.

Both cars will be available on a 0% APR which has to be repaid in 3 years and there is no-deposit finance deal.
Citroen is extending ‘Airdream+’ exceptional edition versions of its C3 and C4.

The C3 Airdream+ will have 1.4 HDI (70bhp) diesel engines which give 64.2mpg and 115g/km of carbon dioxide – and its equipment includes air conditioning, electric windows, rear parking sensors and 15-inch alloy wheels. The price starts from £10,995.
The C4 Airdream+ the price starting from £13,895 is based on the normal 5 door 1.6 HDI SX, with extra parking sensors.

Both cars will be available on a 0% APR which has to be repaid in 3 years and there is no-deposit finance deal.

For the 13th year in a row the Holden Commodore is the best-selling car Down Under.

Though the 51,093 cars sold were less when compared to the Commodore’s peak sales figure of ten years ago 94,642, it was still ahead of the next contender, the Toyota Corolla.
Sales were promoted by the addition of the Sport wagon estate to the array and discounts offered to the tune of $10,000 towards the end of the year.

Toyota, having its manufacturing facilities in Australia, was the best-selling brand by a wide margin. It sold nearly 239,000 vehicles, whereas Holden sold less than 130,500. Ford sold 104,715.

New car sales went down by just 3.6% on 2007’s results, with 1,012,164 vehicles sold. Fiat, Maserati, Ferrari, Volkswagen, Audi and Citroen all recorded large rises.

In Britain, the best-selling car is the Ford Focus and in the US it’s the F-150 pick-up truck.

Mitsubishi is to provide its i-MiEV electric vehicle which is a zero-emissions version of its i city car – to Peugeot-Citroen, based on reports in the Japanese media.

Mitsubishi already has a same kind of arrangement with PSA for sale of its Outlander SUV, also marketed as the Peugeot 4007 and the Citroen C-Crosser. Selling the i-MiEV under the French brand-names will allow it to enlarge its output from a predictable 2000 units in 2009 to more than 10,000 a year by 2011.

Citroen is to bring a right-hand drive version of its Nemo Multispace mini-MPV to the UK next year.

The Nemo and Fiorino are produced in the same factory in Tofas, Turkey, in a joint venture between Fiat and Peugeot-Citroen.
Both the two-door van and the seated-passenger models, with sliding rear doors on both sides and full-length windows, have been developed on a version of the Fiat Panda’s underpinnings, so they should be car-like to drive and reasonably refined.

Engines for the Nemo Multispace are the Fiat 1.4 petrol (73bhp) and 1.3 Multijet diesel (75bhp); the diesel’s good for almost 63mpg and the petrol for over 40mpg.

Starting price of under £10,000 – to draw distance between it and the larger C3 Picasso, which will also go on sale in February.
Citroen’s third new people-carrier, also on sale in February, is a seven-seat version of the popular Berlingo Multispace.

Citroën is planning to build an ultra-environmentally friendly vehicle based on the C-Cactus concept car.

The C-Cactus has a simple design that decreases the number of elements – even doing away with the dashboard – which contributes to a reduction in weight, cost and impact on the environment.
The project will look at a range of power plants, including a 1.0 liter, sub-100g/km CO2 petrol engine; a HyMotion2 diesel-electric hybrid returning near 100mpg and CO2 emissions of just 78g/km; and a 100% electric model that offers zero emissions together with a 70mph top speed and a range of almost 100 miles.

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Minor fine-tunes to the titling are projected to harmonize the looks of the newly reorganized C2. New wheels and trims and interior of the C1 get all-new covering and materials.
Citroen is also predicting better fuel economy and lower CO2 discharges. The 1.0i 68hp petrol version lets out 106g/km of carbon dioxide, which constitutes a decrease of 2.7% on the present model. The mean fuel consumption is fuel 62.8mpg, which is 2.1% betterment.

The new-look C1 will be on sale early in 2009 when further details and prices will be announced.