It doesn't make any sense, but I fell in love with this 'not-really-a-car' car

OK, COMMENTS SECTION. Let me get there before you.

Yes, the Citroën Ami makes little sense.

Yes, it is slow. Yes, it taps out at 45 km/h meaning it’s the first time I received road rage from a Yaris-driving pensioner. Yes, you can buy a decent second-hand car for the same price. Yes, if you were hit by another vehicle at any sort of speed you might not be on solids for a while. I know, I know, I know!

But for some reason, I love the Citroën Ami.

So let me explain.

For those of you who have never heard of the Citroën Ami, it is probably the cheapest new vehicle on sale in 2026. The basic version comes in under €10,000. It is an electric vehicle with a tiny electric motor and battery, a range of 75km on a full charge which takes four hours to fully charge from a standard three-pin plug.

It has two seats, proper seatbelts, and well, little else. It only comes in left-hand drive, and it is mostly made out of hard-wearing plastic.

In fact, it is made out of ABS (acrylonitrile butadiene styrene) plastic, the same tough, versatile plastic used in things like Lego bricks and pipework, mounted on a tubular steel frame.

Using ABS panels lets Citroën reuse identical front/rear panels and quarterlights across the body, cutting production costs. The front of the Ami is the same as the back and the left and right doors are the same, just hinged at the back on the driver’s side and at the front on the passenger side.

Not actually a car

The Ami isn’t really a car, however. It is classed as a L6e-BP light quadricycle, the same EU vehicle category as mopeds and light quadricycles generally, but with a roof and four wheels. Normally, light quadricycles (L6e) fall under the AM licence category in Ireland, driveable from age 16.

But the Irish-spec Ami puts out 6kW of power, which is above the 4kW threshold that keeps a vehicle in that AM/light-quadricycle licence bracket. Because it exceeds that limit, it actually needs a full category B (car) licence rather than the moped-style AM licence.

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So in other countries you can drive the Ami from as young as 14. Go to Paris and you will see the Ami everywhere. The same with Rome.

Here in Ireland, not so much.

The very practical and very nice folk at Citroën Ireland have had a difficult time persuading Irish buyers to buy the Ami. But I did manage to persuade them to send me one, which landed on a truck a few weeks back and, as I type, is being loaded onto the same one to go back to the big smoke. You see, I was pretty sure that where I live is the perfect place for it.

I live close to Ballycotton in East Cork. It is a lovely seaside village near the world-famous Ballymaloe.

Packed in summer, empty in winter, it has great food, great pubs, great walks and great views. And my favourite pub in the world, McGrath’s. The day the Ami arrived I headed to McGrath’s to see what the locals made of it.

They are an eclectic mix of wisdom, acerbic wit and pathological kindness. The reaction was a mix of laughter, surprise, curiosity and delight. If you were only going to mass, Centra, the post office and for the weekly gossip download, the verdict was a positive one.

So what is it like to drive, and how can a lump like me fit?

You swing open the driver’s side door and slide in, and it is actually very spacious. I am 6’2 and pretty, shall we say, generously fed. I managed fine.

Turn the key once and then again, and it sparks up without noise or fanfare. There are no screens, no radio, no airbags, no fuss. The gears, as such they are, are Drive, Neutral and Reverse. There doesn’t appear to be any suspension, as such – your spine being used for that purpose – so that does make you consider whether you should avoid that pothole more carefully.

You can see why someone could drive this at 14.

Slow and easy

It is utterly simple and so slow that you would need to do something incredibly stupid to get in trouble in it. My first spin was to the local shop (slash petrol station, slash post office) and this is where I came across my first issue, because, rather inexplicably, there is a stretch which has a limit of 80 km/h and with my foot to the floor I was at 45 km/h.

So yes, I was holding up everyone, but most people are too curious to get annoyed. And everyone wants to know what it is. Kids sat into it, the DHL man nearly wet himself laughing at it. Even my 15-year-old, Noah, who turns his nose up if I show him anything with less than 300bhp, after one drive was sold. In Paris, he could have taken it himself.

This is of course designed for urban centres. In the centre of Dublin you receive a visit from the ghost of Norris McWhirter if you pass 30 km/h between Santry and Blackrock Churches, so aside from the buses and trucks which would be utterly terrifying to share a road with in the Ami, you won’t be bothering anyone else too much, and it would make a great little runabout.

75km of range in a city or a tiny village is more than enough for most people’s daily chores, and the fact that it takes just four hours on a three-pin plug to get there is neither taxing on time nor your wallet.

Sadly you have to pay road tax (€120), and you have to insure it, which according to Citroën Ireland was a major headache prior to the car’s introduction to Ireland but seems to have been sorted out now.

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You are at least spared an NCT. At a starting price of just under €10,000, it is probably too much for many to take seriously, but there are, at time of writing, 14 of them on DoneDeal Cars, with the cheapest, a 2025 with just 10km on the clock, being offered for €7,950. I suspect you could haggle, too.

With all that in mind, why am I sad to see it go?

Cars are now very heavy, very fast, very complicated, very expensive to run and very bland. The Ami is like driving a modern Morris Minor that won’t rust or leak stuff on your driveway.

You drive slow enough to notice trees, gather your thoughts, wave at people you don’t even know because they’re waving at you first, wondering what on earth you’re driving.

Nobody undertakes road rage in an Ami because nobody could ever be bothered to catch up with you long enough to have the row. It forces a kind of patience onto you that no amount of mindfulness apps have ever managed.

There is also something wonderfully honest about it. Every other electric car I test drive at the moment seems to want to convince me it is smarter than I am. The Ami never once tried. It knew exactly what it was, and so did I, and we got along famously because of it.

I will admit that towards the end of my three weeks I had become oddly attached. I found myself defending it in McGrath’s the way you’d defend a scruffy dog nobody else in the family wanted.

“Ah he’s grand once you get to know him.”

When the man came to collect it on the truck, I had a small pang watching it go up the ramp, indicator flashing away merrily like it hadn’t a care in the world. Which, in fairness, it never did. It couldn’t go fast enough to have one.

Would I recommend you rush out and buy one? Honestly, only if you know exactly what you’re getting: a second car, a runabout for short trips to the shop or the school gates. But as a three-week fling, a reminder that motoring doesn’t have to be an arms race of horsepower and screens, it was one of the more joyful things I’ve driven this year.

I’ll miss the waves. I’ll miss the confused pensioners. I’ll miss trundling along at 45km/h with absolutely nowhere important to be. Mostly, though, I’ll miss being reminded that not every car needs to make sense to be worth having.

Paddy Comyn is the head of automotive content and communications with DoneDeal Cars. He has been involved in the Irish motor industry for more than 25 years.

Journal Media Ltd has shareholders in common with DoneDeal Ltd.