Isle of Wight-based Citroen dealer Central Garage is offering a Citroen C1, worth £6,000 if a customer buys a new luxury C4 Picasso Lounge, worth £23,995.

Roger Sixsmith, Central Garage’s owner, said he was doing the deal, which was also supported by Citroen, in order to attract customers during the recession.

Sixsmith told The Daily Telegraph: “We ran a similar deal during the last recession in the early 1990s. It was successful then and we hope it will be successful again.”

The deal follows a succession of buy-one-get-one-free deals which some dealers have been using to entice customers into showrooms.

One dealer was giving away a free Mazda2 when customers bought a new CX-7 and Broadspeed.com was giving away a free Dodge Avenger when customers bought a new one.