Citroen named manufacturer of the year by GreenFleet

Cit-uation Green

19 October 2006 12:30 GMT / By Jonathan Goddard

Coal mine, coal mine in the valley, who’s the greenest car manufacturer of all? It’s Citroen, apparently.

The GreenFleet awards, designed to increase ecological awareness among those responsible for transport procurement (car fleet managers, to you an I), named the French marque as its manufacturer of the year, beating Toyota and Honda in to podium places.

Three of the four lowest CO2-emitting diesel cars available in the UK are Citroens. And they’re all cheap. In the past year or so, Citroen introduced Stop & Start technology as an option on its C2 and C3 models. This reduces emissions and conserves fuel by switching the engine off when the car is at standstill.

Citroen has also undertaken plenty of work to reduce diesel emissions with a new particulate filter system. All of the company’s HDi vehicles can now be run on much greener 30% bio-diesel without any engine modifications. Lastly, the C4 hybrid, which has both a conventional petrol and electric engine, will go on sale soon.

Sarah Cowell, editor of GreenFleet magazine, said: “Citroën’s policy of developing and marketing environmentally friendly cars that are both practical and affordable played a major part in the company winning the GreenFleet Car Manufacturer of the Year Award, as did its philosophy of making these fuel efficient and low emission vehicles an inherent part of its model range”.

Plaudits indeed, and with the excellent ad campaigns it’s not hard to see why Citroen do so well in the UK. Now all it has to do is start making cars that don’t snap on a blade of grass, and we’ll all be all be laughing.