The new year has arrived, meaning we’re bringing you the annual celebration of car brands and vehicle models that are celebrating key milestones.
These brands and vehicles have become influential players in the automotive industry at least one point in time, with many of these manufacturers and models still going strong to this day.
This means it’s time to give a nod to some of those brands and models that are celebrating key car anniversaries in 2025.
Explore the fascinating backgrounds of each of these automotive birthdays and what they mean to the industry from a past and present perspective!
Citroen C1 – 20 years
First unveiled at the 2005 Geneva Motor Show, the Citroen C1 was one of three car models developed as part of a joint venture between PSA Peugeot-Citroen and Toyota Motor Corporation (TMC).
We will get onto one of the other car models shortly, but as for the Citroen C1, this small passenger car stood the test of time up until its unfortunate discontinuation in 2022.
Both companies anticipated the European market demand for smaller urban cars to increase, with a lot of hopes hinged upon the C1 to deliver – and that it did.
Acting as a replacement to the outdated Citroen Saxo, Citroen saw immense benefit from working with the world’s largest car manufacturers, Toyota, a brand that also had great prior experience in the production of smaller vehicles.
Citroen would cease this opportunity and continue to develop the C1 into one of their most popular models, with the Citroen C1 selling 1,144,875 units in Europe throughout its lifespan (2005-2022).
Even though the C1 is no longer in production, the importance of this model can’t go understated, paving the way for the growing demands of easy-to-manoeuvre, small city cars in the mid-2000s.