The great French Divide

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nick
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Post by nick »

I don't know, the C5 feels a very solidly built car, as does the C4. Citroen just don't seem to consider small cars worth the effort of manufacturing a decent interior! The early AX was awful in that respect, but it didn't stop it being a (mostly) reliable car.
jeremy
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Post by jeremy »

When the AX was designed Citroen were looking for efficiency - and achieved it by building an extremely light car - as they had with the BX. Naturally when using as little metal as possible things are going to feel frail but from the number still around - it was strong enough - and it doesn't seem to rust badly.

Later cars have put on weight - the ZX which feels solid is a tubby little thing - a 1.9D 5 door weighing as much as a Turbo-diesel BX Estate - which is about 1 1/2 feet longer. A Xantia is about 250 Kg heavier (roughly 25% heavier than a BX - and later ones have continued the trend - in fact a C1 weighs about 1 tonne.

One day someone will realise that weight makes cars burn loads of fuel which is environmentally unfriendly - but if they were interested all cars made in the last 10 years would have been diesel.
jeremy
RichardW
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Post by RichardW »

According to you uncle's mate's dad's dog's sister, French cars are unreliable. Or so they heard down the pub.

I bought my current Xantia (1997 TD VSX) in Dec 2004 when it had done only 53k miles. It had had 4 owners or something, and had been a bit neglected on the service front. It only costing £1200, I decided to drive it till it broke. 2.5 years and 62,000 miles later I'm still waiting :twisted: OK it's had a few bits: New front pads and discs, new rear pads and corrosion cleaned out, new exhaust, some new tyres, new glow plugs, new throttle cable, bodged aux belt tensioner, repaired LHM return leak (2 cable ties and a piece of wire), bodged climate temp sensor (hanging out of the dash 8) ), new LHM, new accumulator and front centre sphere (not really required!), replaced indicator switch, Forte rad sealer for the matrix. It's never failed to proceed when asked (or to stop!) - and I'd happily jump in it and drive to the other end of the country (which is exactly what I am doing this weekend - Devon and back for a wedding, probably 1250 mile round trip). The total of most of those items probably comes to less than an annual service on a VW.

One day I might even wash it (it didn't seem to get any dirtier after the first 10k miles, so I have never bothered :lol: ).

I have just grabbed hard the nearest large piece of wood!
Richard W
howiedean
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Post by howiedean »

nick wrote:
rossnunn wrote:
Did you point out the at least £10k difference in the quality? :)
:D When I bought my Xsara HDi last year I noticed I could buy 2-3 of them for the price of a similar age/spec/mileage Golf TDi !

I recently had a Corsa TD owner tell me "I would never buy a foreign car" :shock:
Ok, why do you drive a car built in Spain, by the German division of an American company, with a Japanese engine then? :twisted:
Ssshhhhhhhh, keep quiet otherwise the prices will rise. :wink:
Second hand Citroens are cheap to buy and represent good value for money.
Howie

2006 Fiat Idea Dynamic 1.3 Multijet
2010 Renault Laguna Dynamique tom tom 2.0 DCI 130
C5 VTR 2l 8v HDI Estate 112000 miles gone
Kia Rio 2007 1.5 CRDI 62,000 miles gone
2001 Dodge Durango 4.7 V8 170,000 miles gone
1999 Ford Crown Victoria 4.6 V8 151,000 miles gone
nick
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Post by nick »

Particularly the Xsara, a car that was never very well liked even when it was a current model, but the low prices now make them fantastic value.
I wasn't too sure when I first bought mine, after 15 years of driving hydropneumatic Citroens, but it sort of grows on you after a while. The handling is great, and I'm hopefully getting mine remapped to 140 bhp next week :)
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reblack68
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Post by reblack68 »

bxbodger wrote:
cramped, thirsty car with a boneshaking ride
...Nothing wrong with that....that's what classic british sporting motor-cars are all about!!!
That's a good point, but I wouldn't want that to be my main car. I suspect that what I'm really being told to aspire to is massive depreciation and working one week a month just to pay for the car.
Richard

No French cars of my own at present.
Care of a 1994 205 D.
bxbodger
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Post by bxbodger »

If only I could feed it veggie oil instead of Optimax I'd be a happy chappie!

The BX weighs nothing, and the Triumph weighs a lot less than the BX, and that's with it's unscientifically designed heavy chassis and even heavier drivetrain of all iron 6 cylinder engine, gearbox, overdrive unit, propshaft,axle......... so where is all the extra weight in modern cars? Granted they're bigger, but with modern design techniques and materials they should weigh less, not more.

There's the safety stuff of course: the side impact bars, airbags all over the place, these all add weight and severely cut down on interior space, so the cars have to be made bigger,but I blame the luxuries- aircon for example: loads of extra lard to no extra function, then there's electric windows and sunroofs, pas on even the smallest of cars, and the sheer amount of interior trim in a modern car.I can strip the inside of the Triumph out in under an hour; dash and everything, there's so little in there, but were I to do it on the BX it'd take a lot longer, and I dread to think how much stuff there is inside a C5.
hubrad
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Post by hubrad »

When I still had my first BX, my (long since ex-) girlfriend's mum(!) said the seats were the most comfortable she'd found. This from someone who shopped for cars on seat posture first, having had a major back operation!
Couldn't persuade her to swap their Freelander for my BX Leader though...
Xantia 1.9 TD Estate 1996 - that lovely shade of green that would let you hide in a shady forest.
Fits a 3-piece band with a double bass.
weety
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Post by weety »

bxbodger wrote:If only I could feed it veggie oil instead of Optimax I'd be a happy chappie!

The BX weighs nothing, and the Triumph weighs a lot less than the BX, and that's with it's unscientifically designed heavy chassis and even heavier drivetrain of all iron 6 cylinder engine, gearbox, overdrive unit, propshaft,axle......... so where is all the extra weight in modern cars? Granted they're bigger, but with modern design techniques and materials they should weigh less, not more.

There's the safety stuff of course: the side impact bars, airbags all over the place, these all add weight and severely cut down on interior space, so the cars have to be made bigger,but I blame the luxuries- aircon for example: loads of extra lard to no extra function, then there's electric windows and sunroofs, pas on even the smallest of cars, and the sheer amount of interior trim in a modern car.I can strip the inside of the Triumph out in under an hour; dash and everything, there's so little in there, but were I to do it on the BX it'd take a lot longer, and I dread to think how much stuff there is inside a C5.
have you even picked up a xantia door? when my bx expired i bought a xantia plus a scrapper for spares (expirienced citroen driver :D)

when i took a door of and tried to pick it up i ended up looking around for what was still holding it on!.... they weigh a ton

its my only gripe with a xantia really, nice solid car but the same performance as a non turbo pug 205, clio etc whereas my bx was seriously quick (except when all the lhm had fallen out) and did 55 mpg
M reg xantia 1.9td 266000 miles expired
R reg xantia 1.9td 186000 miles veggy power expired
L reg renault clio 1.9D 91000 miles expired at 107000 miles
x reg clio 15d veggy power bottom of the car rotted through
06 c5 2.2 TD wowser so much power and comfort 160000 miles
LOAC
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Quality

Post by LOAC »

I think the main things that put people off French cars are things like:

Build quality...all those switches and knobs that just fall off when you touch them.

Electrics...done on the cheap and frequently leads to faults.

French arrogance...they know problems are there, but they won't sort them out.

I used to have a couple of BXs and they were great, fast, economical, handled well and were reliable. The Xantia was a backwards step IMHO. Haven't driven any of the C series yet, but I hope they are better.

Just recently bought a Synergie. It's great, but I've already had to replace the electric mirror control knob twice as it has fallen off!

LOAC
Xantia 2.0i Desire Auto 1998 77K miles- For sale

Synergie SX 1.9TD 2000
OwenP
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Post by OwenP »

Well the problem with my G/Fs C3 was that the temp sensor had shorted out, apparently quite a common failing. Took it to the garage after the RAc guy disconnected it to set the engine to default temp.

Went to Chester at the weekend, after it was fixed, to find the high temp warning coming on. The reason, someone at Citroen had forgotten to plug in the connection between the fan and the sensor, so when we slowed down there was no cooling. Need to ring the garage and see what they have to say.

This episode has really rather set her against Citroen, especially after having a VW for 3 years with no problems. So will wait and see what she goes for next time around.
2001 406 Rapier 2.0 HDi 90 Estate - Sold Scrap after being viciously attacked by a falling tree
2001 Toyota MR2 1.8 VVTi - To be sold for spares/repair - dead gearbox :(
2014 Seat Ibiza Eastate 1.4 FR ACT (bought in an emergency, but a nice enough low mileage car)
weety
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Post by weety »

OwenP wrote:Well the problem with my G/Fs C3 was that the temp sensor had shorted out, apparently quite a common failing. Took it to the garage after the RAc guy disconnected it to set the engine to default temp.

Went to Chester at the weekend, after it was fixed, to find the high temp warning coming on. The reason, someone at Citroen had forgotten to plug in the connection between the fan and the sensor, so when we slowed down there was no cooling. Need to ring the garage and see what they have to say.

This episode has really rather set her against Citroen, especially after having a VW for 3 years with no problems. So will wait and see what she goes for next time around.
spent years talking my ex wife into buying a citroen...she finally bought a new xsara but she hated the way bits fell of (she drives an avensis now)

citroen seem to market their cars for people that enjoy spending saturdays either trying to work out how to bodge bits of plastic back on (with the aid of a small self tapping screw and gaffer tape) or trying to track down some obscure electrical fault :D
M reg xantia 1.9td 266000 miles expired
R reg xantia 1.9td 186000 miles veggy power expired
L reg renault clio 1.9D 91000 miles expired at 107000 miles
x reg clio 15d veggy power bottom of the car rotted through
06 c5 2.2 TD wowser so much power and comfort 160000 miles
philhoward

Post by philhoward »

OwenP wrote:
Went to Chester at the weekend, after it was fixed, to find the high temp warning coming on. The reason, someone at Citroen had forgotten to plug in the connection between the fan and the sensor, so when we slowed down there was no cooling. Need to ring the garage and see what they have to say.
That seems to be a (more often than not) common issue with Citroen dealers, rather than the cars themselves.
OwenP wrote:
This episode has really rather set her against Citroen, especially after having a VW for 3 years with no problems.
I had a new VW once...and after waiting over a year, they still never sorted the rattling headlining...it got "forgotten"...
OwenP
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Post by OwenP »

Yet another problem to add to my G/Fs growing dissatisfaction with her C3, on a 200 mile drive today, the ABS failure/malfunction message came up on the display.

This has now completely put her off Citroen, and is starting to make me worry what is going to go wrong next on this pile of "ahem" that is called a car.

So far it has has 3 recalls, 2 complete fresh oil fills (oil level suddenly very low after a drive), a new temp sensor, now the ABS problem, all in 1.5 ish years and 13K miles. Some of the interior trim has been falling off since she got it, one of the exterior rubbing strips fell off, and it needed a new door after some little scrote shot the original (OK not Cits fault). Oh and it still has the intermittent problem where it will die for no apparent reason at low revs, even though the garage can't find any cause or seem too bothered by.

Add to this an assortment of odd noises that my 80K, 11yr old 405 doesn't have and you have a fairly poorly built car from my point of view.

She will not be getting a Citroen again, and I have to say I don't blame her, and I would think very hard about it should I find myself in a position to buy a new one.
2001 406 Rapier 2.0 HDi 90 Estate - Sold Scrap after being viciously attacked by a falling tree
2001 Toyota MR2 1.8 VVTi - To be sold for spares/repair - dead gearbox :(
2014 Seat Ibiza Eastate 1.4 FR ACT (bought in an emergency, but a nice enough low mileage car)
weety
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Post by weety »

couple of years ago i knew a girl with a new yaris.....wow i thought japanese build quality this will be good

forget it plastic trim just pushed together that all fell apart etc etc

i think all manufacturers build down to a price nowadays :(
M reg xantia 1.9td 266000 miles expired
R reg xantia 1.9td 186000 miles veggy power expired
L reg renault clio 1.9D 91000 miles expired at 107000 miles
x reg clio 15d veggy power bottom of the car rotted through
06 c5 2.2 TD wowser so much power and comfort 160000 miles
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