It’s been a long week, hasn’t it? Sure it has. We’ve all worked hard and busted our humps all week, and in the outside world there’s war and uncertainty and the looming spectre of AI making us all into drooling simpletons and it’s just a lot. Now, we here at the Autopian could just throw up our hands and breakfasts and rake everything off our desks with a broad sweep of our arms and take off our shirts and wave them above our heads, helicopter-like, as we scream and wail and kick things, every thing, then stomp on other things and jam our fists into a pair of cups filled with some strangers’ beverages and eventually wrap ourselves up in an area rug and fling ourselves down a long staircase while wetting ourselves, but what would that accomplish, really? Not much. Not enough.
No, we have a much better plan. Instead of losing our lettuce, I think a much better idea is to focus on something good, something right. Something that demonstrated the promise of the human mind, the power of industry and ingenuity and imagination. Something like the 2003 to 2010 Citroën C3 Pluriel.
Now, I know what you’re thinking; it’s a side effect of these pills I’m supposed to take. You’re thinking that the C3 Pluriel was on Top Gear’s worst car list back in 2013. Maybe you’re thinking it was panned in some other publication, or some jackass cornered you at a party and was badmouthing the car as they spilled a tepid Heineken on your shoes. The point is, screw them, all of them, all of those stunted Pluriel haters who value lame-ass things like “rationality” or “not getting caught without a roof in the rain” or whatever bullstench the go on about. Screw ’em. The Pluriel is above such small-mindedness.
Here’s the deal with the Pluriel: Citroën took their already kinda-quirky small hatchback and made a convertible, but they didn’t just stop there. With a healthy dose of inspiration from the legendary 2CV’s flexibility and novel design, they decided to make the Pluriel into so much more. Four more, to be precise.
Yes, the Pluriel was very plural, in the sense that the car could be configured into five quite distinct variations. Citroën had names for these, but I’m including my own and explanations in parentheticals: a 3-door saloon (a closed 2-door hatchback), a panoramic saloon (hatchback with a full-length sunroof), a cabriolet (a convertible with fixed door frames, sometimes called a cabrio coach), a Spider (full convertible – a roadster, but you can’t put up the top without the side rails), and a Spider Pick-Up (a sort of convertible two-seat light duty pickup truck. Maybe a ute is more accurate).
Sure, there were some flaws, mostly having to do with the fact that those big side arched roof rails had to be stashed somewhere when removed, and were required to put the roof back up, but come on! There was so much innovative thought that went into this, and each of these variants is pretty distinct and has its own uses and charms.
Italdesign came up with this clever scheme, and first showed a concept of the Pluriel at the 1999 Frankfurt Auto Show. I’m pretty amazed something so ambitious made it to market, but if there’s any company that was likely to try it, it would be Citroën, who have never been fearful of the weird.
There’s one detail I especially find impressive about how the Pluriel origamis itself into its various forms. It’s the clever way the roof fabric and rear window assembly get out of the way so you can have the full open-roof experience for the cabrio-coach, spider/roadster, or ute configurations. Just look at this:
That’s some masterful stowing-and-going, if you ask me. Let’s look at that step-by-step:
So, drop tailgate, move floor panel, swing down roof/rear window package into well, replace floor panel to cover. It’s seamless! Look at that flat floor thats left after the roof panel is stowed away – you’d never know anything was under there. And then when you fold down the rear seat, the entire rear of the car is one long flat surface, which you can extend with the tailgate, which aligns perfectly to the floor level:
The length of that bed is pretty damn close to some small pickup beds like the Maverick or Hyundai Santa Cruz. Sure, you probably don’t want to load it up with gravel, but you could sure move a couch in there or a bunch of barrels of salt pork and hard tack for your expedition to find the Northwest Passage or put a couple of sleeping bags on there or whatever! It looks to be a hard plastic surface, not carpet or anything.
Also, I don’t see why you can’t have the ute configuration with the side rails in place? That’s pretty much what was happening in the video of dropping the rear window into the cubby if they then folded that back seat.
Why didn’t this catch on more? The idea of a Swiss Army Knife kind of car always seemed really appealing to me, but for whatever reason the few attempts at these really haven’t sold as well as you’d hope. Though, to be fair, I can’t think of that many examples. The Pluriel, of course, and perhaps the Nissan Pulsar NX:
…which transformed from a coupé to a targa to a shooting brake to a convertible with a roll bar. Maybe the issue is these solutions all require the storing of some bulky elements – roof rails or rear caps or whatever. Maybe the code really hasn’t been cracked for these kinds of extreme convertible cars just yet. Perhaps this concept needs to be applied to a larger SUV-type format, something with a midgate and a place to stash roof panels and can go from closed SUV to pickup truck to open-air Jeep-like thing, all without having to store anything anywhere. I think this is still a goal worth pursuing.
I’m also fond of the Pluriel because it feels like the closest modern attempt by Citroën to reclaim the legacy of one of my current obsessions, the 2CV. Citroën even had a “Charleston” version that made very obvious and direct visual connections to the 2CV:
The association I think worked, because it wasn’t just playing on some visual similarities – the car was, like the old 2CV, a genuine and affable weirdo.
The ad campaign also leaned into the weirdness, which I respect as well. Look at these brochure images:
What is that by the Leaning Tower Of Mahal? A steampunk flying chateau airship?
And in this one, it’s a good reminder of how I always forget that Paris is in the middle of a huge desert.
In tone and weirdness, it kind of reminds me of Nissan’s advertising for the Pao, which is a very good thing:
I’m pro-Pluriel. I don’t think all that many people actually are with me on this one, but I’m a sucker for a bold, weird idea. These will be eligible for importing to the US in a couple years, so maybe I’ll get lucky and everyone in Europe will be still sick of these, and be willing to part with them for pimples. I think it’d be a blast to have one – provided I’d really use it in all its many strange forms.
Realistically, something would go wrong and I’d forget to put the roof back together and it’d be full of pine needles in weeks. But I can dream!
About seven years ago, after deciding against the purpose-made kit from Moss Motors to suspend the factory hardtop for my NA Miata above the car when not in use, I bought instead a similar setup intended for kayaks and such, at about half the price. The reputation that the Moss Motors kit has for dropping the top back onto the car figured a bit into my decision to adapt the kayak kit for my needs, with some bungee cords, etc… to prevent such accidents. However my garage is already so stuffed with Metro shelving full of old SGI workstations, and in addition to the garage door rails/opener, I’ve got a full-size ceiling fan and two separate bicycles suspended from hooks up on the ceiling, so there’s not a whole lot of space/clearance left to hang a hardtop from. But it’s doable… I think.
As of this writing (Saturday, March 28th, 2026, which happens to be the date of third national No Kings protests across the United States) the kayak dangling package (complete with ropes and pullies and an assortment of hooks and hardware) continues to sit, unopened, on a wheeled cart in my garage that’s already crowded with a half-dozen propane tanks.
I mention this because if I had a Pluriel, those arch-shaped roof rails would surely be lying on the floor next to where I park the car, just as the Miata’s hardtop is now doing in my garage.
Speaking of No Kings – I just got back from our local protest. I was heartened to see that the No Kings side of the road here in God’s Waiting Room, FL (normally Trump-loving and Ruby Red) had at least a couple thousand turnout, while the Trump supporters across the street numbered, er, 5. Yes, 5 sad idiots on the other side of 6-lane Rt-41 though Port Charlotte with signs, flags, and a bullhorn.
Those adverts are beyond bizarre.
As a current driver of a second-gen C3, I cannot stop admiring the Pluriel.
Every time I think I would have intervened if I were on the executive team for a product I think of Sharknado. I would have fired everyone involved with the Sharknado proposal and instructed them to seek substance abuse counseling. $4.5B USD in economic value, 14 movies later, gaming, merchandise… Sometimes you actually hit something when you swing for the fences. But sometimes you get sugar-free Haribo gummy bears.
Wait, what, the Sharknado franchise is worth $4.5 billion? I didnt even know it was a franchise, think I caught part of maybe the first one one time. And, yet, Mulholland Drive was a failure
I always thought the Pluriel was great, I want one.
Well, right now used car prices for this car are very low, less than 3000 on average, so you might get lucky in a few years 🙂
If you want to see one in the flesh as of last summer there was one parked on Roosevelt Island in NYC on diplomatic plates https://share.icloud.com/photos/0bf9Xi9YNuviaWX-FozWPaAfQ
I love the Pluriel too, for precisely these reasons, that it could be multiple cars at once.
I love cars that can do many things. Versatility is underrated.
Wonder how it did in Australia.
I’ve now learned French blondes come it two sizes!
Some how I believe that if this had a bowtie on the front it would be paned as a unholy fail deservedly so. French cars get a lot slack for being French like it explains away scrappy design
Clever?
They were awful. The roof leaked, the bars rattled, and if you take the bars off and leave them at home you can’t put the roof back up while you are out.
Yeah, “clever” is one word for it. Personally I’d go with “bold experiment that immediately failed its physics exam.”
The Pluriel was basically Citroën saying: What if a car could be a convertible, a pickup, a bathtub, and a financial mistake—all at once?
The roof leaked like it had a personal grudge against staying dry. They tried to fix it over the years, but the water always won. And once you took the bars off, you were basically committed to driving home as a convertible forever, because putting the roof back on required the patience of a monk and the hand–eye coordination of a neurosurgeon.
And of course, being a cheap French car plus water, it rusted in places you didn’t even know a car had. The engine? Let’s just say a motivated snail could overtake it without breaking a sweat. But hey, at least the snail wouldn’t leak.
Quality issues? So many that counting them becomes a mindfulness exercise. This thing rolled off the line right before Citroën and Peugeot collectively realized, “Oh right, quality control exists.”
So when they finally axed the Pluriel, the cars basically vanished overnight. Nobody wanted them, and anyone with a functioning brain cell avoided them like a cursed object. Keeping one running cost more than the car itself—usually by the second week.
If you see one today, you don’t think “wow, rare classic.” You think, “oh no… who hurt you, and why are you still driving this damp, rattling, rust‑powered misery box?”
Great idea on paper. In reality? Citroën simply wasn’t ready to build something that complicated—and the Pluriel proved it spectacularly.
Spent all my summers in France as a child (whole family is French) and you’d actually see these. It was only later in life that I realized these weird French cars only sold in decent numbers in France, and nowhere else…
I think this didn’t work for the same reason all modular cars don’t work. People don’t want to spend thousands on a car only to play oversize Lego and have to store huge components at home (car parts are surprisingly large when taken indoors, even a garage).
This is also why (among many other reasons) the Slate won’t work.
Like it or not, the expectation for a convertible these days is a 1 button operation.
I don’t know that the Slate is intended to be ‘shifted’ from one mode to another. You just pick the style you want when ordering. I guess you could swap from SUV to open SUV which shouldn’t be any more of a hassle than swapping a hardtop on/off a jeep (but still way more hassle than a modern convertible).
I expect that’s how it will work, they will stay in the configuration they are ordered in forever, I really doubt many, if any, pickup buyers will convert them to SUVs down the road or vice versa
Jason,
your weird and mine. If cheap enough buy 2 cause you’re going to need a parts car. I love the Charleston version. There I said it, and would drive that thing everywhere. Well probably not long distance trips
As I remember, there wasn’t anywhere inside the car to really store those giant arches, when you took them off?
So like the heavy Mercedes R107 hardtop, a feature you don’t use very often.
Would like one, just to piss off Top Gear evangelists! 😀
The R107 hardtop just requires the right infrastructure. My uncle had a 380 SL and an industrial plumbing supply business. He would drive into the warehouse, pick up the roof with the overhead crane and store it on a pallet rack.
I’d still rock a C3 Pluriel.
–Or alternatively “doing the turtle” 😀
WOW these are cool! And they’re cheap too. Yeah probably cheap for a reason but still, they’re cool.
If only it had been made by someone that makes better cars than Stellantis and its precursors 🙁
“… a good reminder of how I always forget that Paris is in the middle of a huge desert.”
Well, Nevada is mostly desert.
Now I know exactly what car I want when I retire to Portugal.
I was going to say that’s not Paris, that’s Vegas.
Paris is in Las Vegas, its right next to the old MGM Grand, whatever its called now
So it looks like a normal French car
Other than the fact that the name sounds like some sort of moist respiratory ailment, I love it, especially the Charleston version. Although it seems every time one of these Swiss army knife cars comes around, it seems like they land with a thud. Remember the Oldsmobile Envoy XUV “for hauling tall things”, Avalanche “Convert-a-Cab”, and SSR “Retractable WTF”. Maybe it’s all about scale?
Nissan Pulsar NX
Also Studebaker Wagonaire if you’re old like me.
Christ almighty, look at grandpa over here. Just kidding
Well the shoe fits!
The marketing was an unsubtle suggestion to use your Pluriel in places it doesn’t rain. I understand that this car was also rattle-prone and shaky, and if you chose the automatic it would break.
But it’s cute! I can’t help but like it. Aside from the Ami, Citroen’s current lineup has all the visual appeal of a squashed cane toad.
In terms of the way they’re used, I think the Citroen Berlingo Multispace is probably more of a spiritual successor to the 2CV.
The early models are now mostly over 20 years old but they’re still incredibly common across France being used for anything from family cars to teeny tiny motorhomes, and all points in between. You could throw a baguette blindfolded in any major town and have a good chance of hitting one.
So instead of doing one thing in a great way, it can do 5 things in a mediocre way. Where do I sign up?
It’s one of those cars that’s much better in concept than in execution.
The only thing more pants-dampening that this is Superpiss.
I was honestly ready to start defending Jeremy Clarkson and all the haters before I read the article.
But suddenly it hit me that the only really negative thing about the car is that it is possible to take off the side roof rails/arches.
If you just always keep them on it’s almost purely a brilliant and quite diverse car.(except for the other minor downsides that come with all convertibles)
Is it up there with the 2CV? definitely not. Is it better than a motorized roof Civic Del Sol? I would dare say maybe.
Yeah – I honestly see no real need to remove them. Keep them fixed for lighter weight and rigidity. It’s still as open as you ever will need.
Okay. This is the right car to park in front of Stellantis HQ to troll everyone. I was wrong about it being the TC. It’s this.
Quality issues? Sounds like maybe?
Ambitious? Sure.
French? Most definitely.
Will earn a ticket from the guards? Oh ya you betcha.
Something that at least the European executives want to forget? Probably.
It is most certainly weird in the kind of way I like, though.
A Jacques of all trades, a maitre of none.
May We Mon Sewer!
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