page_title: Citroën Visa
section_title: Development
hierarchical_section_title: Citroën Visa / Development
caption_attribution_description: English: 1980 Citroën Visa with the 652cc boxer-two engine
context_page_description: The Citroën Visa is a five-door, front-engine, front wheel drive supermini manufactured and marketed by Citroën from 1978 to 1988 in gasoline and diesel variants. 1,254,390 examples were ultimately manufactured over a single generation, with a single facelift. China has also assembled the car as the Liuzhou Wuling LZW 7100 minicar. Production started in 1991 and finished in 1994.
  Citroën commissioned Heuliez to produce a Visa convertible variant, marketed as the Décapotable, and a box van variant was marketed as the Citroën C15. A sedan variant was prototyped but never manufactured.
context_section_description: In 1965 Robert Opron began working on the Citroën G-mini prototype and project EN101, a replacement for the 2CV using its flat twin engine and intended to launch in 1970. The advanced space efficient designs with compact exterior dimensions and an aerodynamic drag co-efficient Cd of 0.32, were never fully developed because of negative feedback from potential clients.
  A subsequent program, the Citroën Prototype Y, was developed in the early 1970s in co-operation with Fiat, to replace the 2CV-based Citroën Ami — using lessons from the Citroën G-mini and EN101 projects. Prototype Y used the Fiat 127 platform with the pioneering transverse front-engine, front wheel drive layout Fiat had test-marketed in the Autobianchi Primula.
  When cooperation with Fiat ended, Citroën designed its own platform, and subsequent to the takeover of Citroën by Peugeot in the wake of the 1974 oil crisis, the renamed "Projet VD (Voiture Diminuée)" became the Citroën Visa, incorporating the floor pan of the Peugeot 104 and using the 104 engine, transmission (under the engine) and chassis. The Visa thus became the first model under PSA Peugeot Citroën's platform-sharing policy.
  In 1984, the original Citroën platform design from "Project Y" emerged as the Romanian Oltcit Club, using a Citroën Visa flat-twin engine and Citroën GS-based gearbox or the GS flat-four engine and gearbox. This was also marketed in Western Europe as the flat-four (only) Citroën Axel to recoup Citroën's Romanian investment, which the Romanian government could not repay. The resulting vehicle exhibited build quality issues, with 60,184 cars ultimately manufactured.
caption: Citroën Visa MkI
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