2021 Citroen Ami Buggy Concept

READY FOR ADVENTURE, CITROËN MY AMI BUGGY CONCEPT EMBODIES AMI’S VISION OF LEISURE

- Citroën My Ami Buggy Concept expresses the vision of an Ami dedicated to leisure, enabling customers to experience fun excursions while travelling an all-electric mobility vehicle in the style of an adventurer.

- My Ami Buggy Concept features numerous stylish attributes to assert its intrepid and friendly backpacker personality, which is both robust and vibrant, while incorporating numerous accessories and graphic components in a passenger compartment freed from its doors.

- This concept expresses the Citroën Style without restraint, drawing its inspiration from non-automotive worlds such as construction games, industrial design and fashion. My Ami Buggy Concept boasts uninhibited style, but remains totally anchored in real life – both fun and functional, aesthetic and ergonomic, practical and environmentally-friendly, promoting leisure micro-mobility.

- My Ami Buggy is a concept car playfully imagined, that every child from the age of 14 to 77 would want to add to their Christmas list.

Citroën My Ami Buggy Concept is a liberated and distinctive illustration of an object designed to enjoy leisure time in a new way – a trail-blazer with an extroverted, colourful and muscular style that still strives to remain very simple and functional. The Citroën teams have come up with this completely liberated Ami, aimed at all those who would look for an electric, easy-to-use vehicle with a strong personality, exuding incredible character.

Citroën My Ami Buggy Concept is an invitation for all fans of independence who will be able, for the duration of a journey, to see themselves as adventurers on the roads or beach tracks. My Ami Buggy Concept offers a recreational vehicle for weekends, holidays by the sea or in the countryside, which will win users over with its practicality. A model with an electric traction mode allowing it to move noiselessly and emission-free, offering the pleasure of electric driving enhanced by the absence of doors, in order to travel total immersed in the environment and bathed in light thanks to its panoramic roof.

“My Ami Buggy is a proposition in line with the philosophy of Ami, which is not a car. We have therefore looked for inspiration in the world of construction games for the fun and functional side, industrial design for ergonomics and aesthetics, encompassing everyday objects (furniture, lighting, etc.) and fashion accessories (sneakers, sports equipment, glasses, etc.). The simple, extruded shapes of the camera and smartphone holders, for example, were inspired by the work of designers who created essential and timeless consumer objects in the second half of the last century. My Ami Buggy Concept needed to be functional and simple, in the purest spirit of iconic and contemporary industrial objects.”

Samuel Pericles, Designer of My Ami Buggy

DESIGN: AMI PLAYS THE UNINHIBITED ADVENTURER

ASSUMED ROBUST EXTERIOR STYLING

Sitting securely on its wide notched wheels, My Ami Buggy has a resolutely adventurous character, highlighted at the front and at the rear by its bull-bars, hubcaps and headlight grilles, its bumpers and its faceplates, in the centre of which sit the chevrons. On the sides, the silhouette is strengthened by reworked fender flares and tubular protections along the bottom of the doors. On the roof, the roof-rack and spare wheel emphasise the concept’s spirit of adventure. All these decorative elements come in a single shade of colour-impregnated black.

The LED light bar on the front of the roof adds an adventurous touch to head into the night or the fog. Once stationary, everything comes together to provide a “camp-fire” atmosphere, created by the light diffused by this rail and the music from its nomadic speaker.

The doors have been removed, replaced by transparent rainproof canvas that can be pulled back in bad weather, in a nod to the Mehari. These are fitted with zippers to enclose the passenger compartment, with high openings evoking the glazed doors on conventional vehicles. These practical protective curtains can be removed, rolled up and stored behind the seats in dedicated storage bags.

A roof cap has been fitted above the windscreen, running out from the roof and offering protection against adverse weather conditions. It provides shade in summer by shielding the rays of midday sun.

The wide “mud” tyres and their matt gold offset rims provide good road-holding and increased stability on all surfaces.

Although it is an unrestrained expression, the designers have nevertheless ensured that the concept is both realistic and effective. Fixing certain elements was a real challenge for the technicians who, in some cases, have had to attach them directly to the tubular chassis to make sure they are secure. This is particularly the case with the bull-bars and the spare wheel on the roof.

A STATE OF MIND CONVEYED BY COLOURS AND MATERIALS

My Ami Buggy Concept comprises a total of three colours: black, khaki and yellow. The black, inspired by camping equipment, reinforces the functional and robust nature of the vehicle. The different shades of black – Anodised Black on the wheel arches and roof and Speckled Black for a hammered effect on the rear – perfectly complement the Anodized Khaki and Citric Yellow shades, conveying an overall adventurous appearance enhanced with meticulous details.

My Ami Buggy Concept sports a two-tone exterior, giving it a very attractive and dynnamic design: Anodized Khaki at the front and Speckled Black at the rear, an interplay of symmetry which also aims to clearly distinguish the front from the rear of the vehicle.

The Anodized Khaki shade offers an allusion to nature, while black, evoking strength and modernity, catches the light and dramatizes the associated colours. The choice of black was also motivated by the desire to use a darker shade that hides dirt.

Many key elements of My Ami Buggy Concept are highlighted by an occasional dash of Citric Yellow, including the seats, the charging cable, the graphic door pods, as well as all the luggage area and a number of the accessories. This tangy colour also indicates that the highlighted objects serve a functional purpose.

AN EYE FOR DETAIL

And to take the customization even further, additional technical details bring the vehicle to life.

Striations and adhesives echoing the theme of the chevrons, a strong marker of the Citroën Style, are repeated, with the same graphics on various exterior and interior elements to create rhythm and evoke the grille of the Traction, the centre console of the 19_19 concept car, the bottom of the front body of the Ami One Concept and the design of the Ami storage bins. On My Ami Buggy Concept, they are visible externally on the wheel caps, the faceplates, the roof cap, the side protection plates, the light bar brackets, at the bottom of the bumpers and the back of the wing mirrors, as well as inside on the brackets for the accessories, the storage bins and dashboard.

The word “Pilot” appears on the roof on the driver’s side and the word “Copilot” on the passenger side, while in the same nod to motor racing, the number 01 features on the driver’s seat and 02 on the passenger’s seat to indicate their positions.

Yellow arrow-shaped stickers under the spoiler show the direction of the wind, in a tribute to aviation. Similar decoration is also found on the wheel arches.

A “+” badge appears in the driver’s side mirror, referring to the electric motor and the battery terminals, as well as the parking spaces reserved for electric vehicles.

PRACTICAL: FUNCTIONAL AND ERGONOMIC

A FUNCTIONAL AND MORE COMFORTABLE INTERIOR PACKED WITH STYLE

Three areas of the My Ami Buggy Concept have been the subject of painstaking interior design work: the seats, the storage and the luggage area.

My Ami Buggy Concept features new Advanced Comfort® seat cushions, the foam of which has been increased from 35mm on Ami to 70mm. Adding memory foam has made the seats both light and soft. They can easily be removed from the shell and are interchangeable and washable. They are made by assembling two shells, one on top of the other – inspired by the design of a buoy and therefore creating a link with the world of beach accessories.

The storage areas are clever and portable. Each has its own function within the passenger compartment but can be taken outside for a picnic or an outing.

The storage bins on the dashboard, accessories already available on My Ami, have been specially redesigned for My Ami Buggy Concept. A matt gold metal storage rack is fixed above the bins to prevent objects from moving.

A special range of luggage has been designed, each item of which fits perfectly into the vehicle's interior spaces. The bum bag attaches to a magnet in the centre of the steering wheel, specially recessed to accommodate it, and can also be worn on the belt via its loop. A sailor’s bag with a flap has its own place under the dashboard, in the storage space that holds a cabin suitcase in Ami. It is held at the bottom by a tubular structure to stop it falling over.

A storage space is also built into the doors at seat height. This can hold any type of object or a large detachable bag especially designed to be stored there and which can be opened from the inside. This can serve as a storage tray. A fun button unlocks the doors, which are rear-hinged as on the Ami.

The charging cable, meanwhile, is fitted into a holder in the passenger door frame in the shape of a handle to facilitate the catching of objects.

ATTRACTIVE AND FUNCTIONAL ACCESSORIES WITH AN UNPRECEDENTED DESIGN

My Ami Buggy Concept accessories are more than an exercise in style. They had to have a real function. The designers put themselves in the place of lovers of all kinds of leisure activities, to come up with functional objects to make excursions aboard My Ami Buggy Concept both fun and practical.

The design of the interior aimed to be educational, in order to facilitate on-board movements, ensuring that the handling of objects is very intuitive. For example, the tightening wheel used to hold objects or make adjustments is used repeatedly, ensuring consistency. Its design instinctively suggests its functioning. Since the fastening mechanisms of many of the accessories are designed in the same way, they are transversal and can be detached and repositioned at different places in the passenger compartment, like a building game.

This is the case, for example, with the holder for attaching a camera, a must to immortalise and share instantly highlights of your journey or the landscapes you are travelling through... Equipped with a universal screw to accommodate all types of devices, it can be removed using a release trigger built into the part, allowing it to be placed on the four anchoring points situated on the vertical frames of the driver and passenger doors.

The external mirrors, which can be adjusted thanks to a ball joint incorporated into the fixing points, fit into position on the door uprights. They are also removable.

The cup or bottle holder can be found either on the dashboard or on the position replacing the My Ami bag holder.

The smartphone clamp developed for My Ami, located to the right of the driving position, becomes a designer cylindrical holder on My Ami Buggy Concept, featuring a tightening wheel on the right-hand side to hold the phone in place. The tube can be engraved with the owner’s name, a key feature that some will appreciate.

A new conical support has been designed to secure the nomadic speaker in the rounded recess set into the dashboard behind the steering wheel.

It is a short step from idea to reality with 3D printing. Each of these accessories has been designed from scratch, since they have the distinction of being 3D-printed and therefore able to be reproduced on demand.

My Ami Buggy Concept is above all an invitation to have fun and to satisfy your thirst for freedom, leisure and non-conformity. A study in style which will be on many people’s Christmas list, My Ami Buggy Concept illustrates one of the many faces that could be developed for Ami, the atypical vehicle developed by Citroën, ready to explore new horizons.