Citroën picked the Madrid International Motor Show — the 25 to 28 May 2006 edition at Feria de Madrid — to unveil C-Buggy. The two-seater shared stand space with two production debuts: a 173 hp HDi V6 diesel slated for the Citroën C5 later that year, and a six-speed electronic transmission destined for the C4. C-Buggy itself was the show’s eye-catcher. It looked like nothing else on the floor.
The concept rides on a modular chassis with permanent four-wheel drive and a limited-slip rear differential. There’s no roof, no windscreen, no side glass, no doors in the conventional sense. Instead the body sides are cut into wide openings so the driver and passenger step in directly from kerb level. Citroën made a deliberate choice with the bodywork finish: untreated metal, designed to oxidise over time. The shell’s appearance changes through use rather than degrading. Internally the cockpit reverses that quiet-metal exterior — acid yellow grained leather covers the dashboard, side panels and seats. The contrast is the central design idea.
C-Buggy was developed by Citroën Création under design director Jean-Pierre Ploué, conceived as the leisure-and-adventure counterpart to C-AirPlay — the small urban concept Citroën had presented at the Bologna Motor Show in December 2005. The two share family resemblance in their compact, rounded volumes and their preference for clean unbroken side surfaces over creases and shut lines, but they target opposite use cases. C-AirPlay reads as a city runabout. C-Buggy as a beach-and-trail toy. Citroën’s communications team described the relationship as «the cheerful go-anywhere sidekick» to the urban runabout — informal language that sat comfortably with the concept’s overall personality.
Inside, the layout sits closer to a single-seater racing car than to a passenger compartment. Essential information is positioned directly in the driver’s line of sight. Fixed central controls live on the steering wheel itself. The instrument cluster groups speedometer, rev counter, fuel gauge and indicator lamps in a single unit with deliberately graphic, modernist styling. Door portholes (in glass, despite the absence of doors) hint at off-road intent without committing to a full window package, and the body-side cutouts include integrated sills for vehicle access. Wide wheel arches, big wheels and a sump guard underline what the chassis can actually do: this was a runner, not a static show prop.
C-Buggy never reached production. It was built as a design statement, with no engineering programme to follow. Citroën would return to similar territory more than once in the following decade — through the Cactus M concept of 2015, the production E-Méhari from 2016 (which revived the Méhari nameplate after a 28-year gap on Bolloré-derived electric architecture), and the My Ami Buggy of 2022 (an Ami-based open-sided microcar that did briefly reach the showroom in limited numbers). C-Buggy itself sat earlier in that lineage. It introduced the design vocabulary that those later vehicles would refine, with the 2006 Madrid reveal serving as the public marker of Citroën’s continued attachment to the Méhari idea.
