UK-POLOS.NET - THE VW Polo Forum

Ok, I know this is a VW Polo forum, but my brother saw this Citroën Xsara at our VW dealer today and is thinking about buying the thing...

It's a 3-door Xsara GLX from 2002, with a 16V 1.6 engine and all the goodies (radio, air-cond, 4 air-bags, ABS, the lot).

I only know one Citroën driver, and she has a C3 (and I suspect she can't tell it from a Polo). So, I decided to ask you guys what you think of Xsaras in general, and whether you have any advice that might help my brother.

The car is clean and still under factory warranty (expires Apr. 2005 apparently). 33,000Km.

Any info on this sort of car would be appreciated.

Cheers!

well the only thing i can say is its french so dont bother!!!

but i suppose it cant be that bad.......

why not find him a vw like a gol!

btw im half brazilian!!

how far away are you from fotelaza, ceara?

how come you speak good english?

meu portuguese e huin!!

so sabi falla cosa's mal!!

i cant spell the language, so good luck!!!

Well, my dad's Xantia seems pretty good for it's age... and it's far, far older than that Xsara would be the only thing he's really had to have done out of the ordinary is a slight chop & re-clamp of a perished fuel line.

What you have to look out for with many citroens though is that everything runs off the same hydraulic (pneumatic?) system... e.g. the suspension, the power steering, the brakes... so if you hammer it towards a corner on an odd camber and brake hard, you'll find the wheel a fair bit harder to turn! (or, if you're already turning, the brakes will be less effective). Also something to do with the brake pedal being a bit "fly by wire" - it's more of a variable relay than a proper normal brake setup, it has about a half second response time extra compared to a regular car He always leaves a large gap in traffic and I suggest your brother does too.
(They bite as strongly as anything under emergency stopping force, only thing is, that force comes in 500ms late......)

I don't think they use the hydraulic stuff on their smaller cars (if at all) nowadays...

But it's French, so don't expect anywhere near Germanic build quality, however they're light, so are usually quite nippy!

Nearly bought a Xsara VTR 1.8 16v about 3 years ago... no idea why I never bought it in the end, was pretty fast though.

Cant really give that much of a judgement coz i neva owned one, however a cople of mates have a trouble with citroens and i work with some taxi drivers who have had xsaras and have had nothing but trouble. They certainly drive nice tho and aint expensive to run I would go with a vw tho hehe

Ive had loads of hire cars/company cars that were French and i hated them...always sent them back and asked for something German instead!!
Maybe im just picky...but French cars generally aren't the best !!

Thank you all for your posts!

I checked the car earlier today and it wasn't really worth the trouble... Bit dodgy, all the signs of a careless previous owner - or maybe a boy racer. Not really sure, but that Xsara's been sitting there at Carbel VW/Audi for 3 months now so it can't be good.

Lots of heavy usage signs, plus they washed the engine which isn't a good sign.

So now we're left with the question... what small/compact car, APART from Golf and Polo, that you'd recommend?

We've ruled out Golfs because they're very expensive and insurance costs are also prohibitive (especially since my brother is 23). And the Polo, well he's considering a Polo Sedan but he'd prefer something else .

Any recommendations?

New Fiat Panda?

Just so someone somewhere on the planet can say they've bought one?

Hehe that ain't being sold here.

According to Fiat (and this came from a company spokesman in this country's main motoring magazines) the new Fiat Panda is "too sofisticated" for South America.

Can you believe this? No wonder Fiat is in such a crisis. Now they say to consumers from what used to be their most profitable market, and later its only profitable market that their sh*tty new product is too good for them... So, Palio it is...

Ahem. Well, enough bashing Fiat. (one of my fave sports tho)

I think my brother's looking for something, well, more substantial. Maybe a used Stilo if it's got to be from Shiat (I'd kill him if he did that).

Too sophisticated for south america? Never seen a spokesman as bold as that before Especially when the car's a panda.. perfectly nice car now, but hardly sophisticated..

I have to say, most new small cars are pretty decent now, there's not all that much between them, so I'd just go for whatever you like the look of really..

my learner car was a Saxo diesel and that fell to bits on an even road!!

Eh? The new panda's like a misshapen Mk3 "fox" but with half as much metal isn't it? Too sophisticated, compared to your 9n?
(the old one being like a copy of a base-model mk1 flat-hatch concept accidentally produced in tinfoil..... still great fun though.. because minimum-weight decontented buggies are *always* fun!)

Well, that statement didn't help Fiat at all as you've probably guessed.

Kinda like when Ford said that the Brazilian market wasn't "ready" for safer cars when the press asked why the new Fiesta didn't have any airbags as standard for our market - that in a country where 60,000 die every year in car accidents. That's kinda like making a case for arab terrorism in a 9/11 victims' families convention.

That sort of thing is called shooting yourself in the foot ain't it? "Not ready". Yeah right.

Now what amazed me about the Panda statement, apart from fact that the bloke was talking about a friggin' Panda (it's no Ferrari after all!) was the contrast between that and their care when the Palio was launched instead of the Punto over here. Everybody expected the Punto, that "178" project thing came about pretty late and several magazines had published disguised Puntos running about in the country. So Fiat was very very careful not to draw any comparisons, though te Palio turned out to be better car of the two at the end of the day.

Still... We're looking more for 'compact family car' as euro NCAP puts it, rather than a supermini, though one of the better Superminis would do.