I will keep this as trimmed as possible!
Anyway, to set the scene I am 30 years old and the tale began back in 1996 when my father part-ex'd a Rickman Ranger kit car (he built in 1990, based on a 2.3 non turbo ford Granada running gear on escort mk2 based chassis) for his 1994 Maroon Citroen Xantia Diesel L822BRY. Although sorry to see his kit car go after 6-7 years of *ahem* trouble-freeish motoring it was becoming a bit of a liability so the decision was made. Being 1996 I was merely 14 years old and as memory serves it was bought mainly to go on a family holiday to Italy (camping) and something reliable was required for such an epic trip.
Moving forward the time came for the trip and off through the Alps we went, through the Mont-Blanc tunnel and we had a good week in 'Cecina' near Livorno, belting trip until the way home when my Dad made the classic error of turning into oncoming traffic in Dijon and we went head on with a Fiat Croma....
The car was toast, there wasn't much left of it if I am honest but luckily, we all walked away pretty unscathed. So stuck in the middle of France with no car and a hell of a lot of luggage we were given an Opel Vectra estate to finish the French leg of the journey in before a Mk3 Astra from Dover to the East Midlands. Crap end to a really good holiday. So the old man decided he liked his Xantia enough to buy another so a Petrol turd was bought N452WVO, I quite liked this one but Dad always wanted another Diesel and I think he bought WVO in a bit of 'act in haste, repent at leisure' moment...
Roll on to 1999 where my Dad had been regularly visiting Mark Pritchard of Derby Citroen dealership and decided he was going to go for what he wanted a Xantia Diesel facelift version from new, so T939SRR was bought, a 1.9 TD LX... Well, this was the start of a pretty cool tale as my Dad proceeded to rack up over 100k in3.5 years. This car had been many places and was part of our lives at an interesting time, it had been up Mont-Ventoux including cooking the brakes on the way back down, toured most of France took my late Grand Parents on holiday been to Scotland countless times and not to mention the fact our Dad absolutely loved it, he regularly talks about this car being the best car he ever had and regrets part exchanging it in Dec 2003 for a Honda Civic CDTI, despite the Honda also being an excellent car.
Roll on to a few years ago and my Dad had changed jobs and was requiring to do a 100 mile commute to work. This was mainly down to the company shifting on some deadwood and saving money... So the nearly new Grande Picasso he owned at the time was racking up some epic mileage. I suggested to my Dad he gets an old snotter to smoke up and down the motorway in and eventually he decided that was a good idea! So a friend of mine’s wife had a 1.6 Golf Mk3 petrol (1994) up for grabs for throwaway money and Dad decided to give it a go. Great little car that saved him loads of money and it just kept going (probably still is)! It was only replaced when I happened to spot a 2000 HDi 90 Xantia sat around in a friends unit and when I asked him ‘what’s the crack with the xantia’ he said, ‘I need it out the way’. A quick call to my Dad and I said, if you are going to spend some time on the road why not get back behind the wheel of a xantia??.... cutting out the nonsense folding was exchanged and the Xantia was bought. It served my old man well from Feb 2012 to Aug 2012 when he retired at 62 and moved to France! He had notched up just under 10k on the Xantia and had even took it down to Devon for a long weekend away! What became of the Xantia? Well, after talking himself out of taking it to France he gave it to me and said look after it and when you eventually sell it (or weigh it) I will have the money! Suffice to say, the old dog is still serving me well! We often joke over Skype about old bangers being the future and the Xantia was actually a really good car and was never acknowledged by the masses as great all round vehicle. He often says, I should never have sold T939SRR, that was a great car...
Last week I thought, lets have a butchers on ebay (as you do) and would you believe it there it was! T939SRR just a few miles away in Melton, with MOT until Jan and no tax as the only reason for sale... I rang the old boy who owned it, he told me had it 6-7 years and was the third owner. I got a whole load of spiel about how he loved the car and if it wasn’t so much to keep taxing the 3 vehicles he had it wouldn’t be for sale. So a call to my younger brother and we said, lets go and get it! My brother insured it on his trade policy and we went the following night. We saw it was in pretty good shape, it even had the ‘Mark Pritchard of Derby’ Plates and an ‘Ecosse’ Sticker on the tailgate he stuck on there over 12 years ago! We parted with £425. We only told the old boy as we were leaving who we were and why the car was being bought and needless to say he was made up with the story! All the old receipts are there in our Dad’s name and the car hasn’t suffered too badly over the 10 years it has been gone and even showing 159,700 on the clock the majority of the mileage is still Dad’s doing!
Roll forward to this weekend and we got the car back to my brothers bodyshop and lavished it with some attention, I robbed Peter to pay Paul (My HDi to this TD) with the wheel trims it should have had (long since MIA) and after a good mop and valet it started to look like the proud chariot it once was and how we remembered it....
The parents are over next weekend, they are not in the UK all that often anymore and we plan to surprise him with it! He will either clip us both round the ear and say “WTF did you buy that for?” Or be amazed and want to take it back to the homeland, we are hoping for the latter as I already have 4 cars...
Here are a few pics for you other Xantia freaks to enjoy! (sorry for the mobile phone poor quality)
The day after we bought it ^^^
