I know it's a joke, but if you clip a curb or even a slightly chunky branch at 15mph in one of these EVERYONE DIES (...only partially joking)

In a crash it'll fold up like the tin can it is, even against a car of a similar vintage and size (no comment on the cows). Up against even a modern supermini and you're literal mince meat, let alone a modern SUV. At least you won't suffer long.

So if you are off roading or on a snowy road, hopefully you won't slip into a tree or roll over. Modern cars - even "small" ones -are heavier partly because they are substantially safer. A crash that would have had to have you cut out of the wreckage by the fire brigade (potentially losing a limb or two in the process) is now the sort of thing you can walk away from. Yes even in "small" modern cars (you do not need a SUV for safety).

It's night and day really - just go look at the archive on EuroNCAP.. In the crash tests that left 90s and early 2000s cars as unrecognisable mounds of broken and twisted metal (e.g. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9a8PTeFDaYU which was a car that was probably 10 years more advanced than the c15 in terms of safety...) now barely even break the windscreen of modern super-mini cars (e.g. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NaWVepTJTGw&t=1s&pp=2AEBkAIB). Amazing.

I used to drive through France in the C15 days and you'd see a lot of crashes compared to England, a lot because of the road layouts. Straight in France so people went fast through villages and the like. In England everything's twisty.

The Citroen Saxo was notably terrible. It was remarked upon even at the time, especially due to the target market of its sportier versions: foolish young men. Here's another hatchback from 2000, faring noticeably better: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBXNgKwWFs - not to say for a moment that you wouldn't still want a 2025 car.