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Captain Slow Charging
It is happening? again.
It is happening? again.
What do you know? I seem to be back in the four-car fleet again, this time with something incredibly useable and practical. And as long as I've owned a car of any sort, I've known a Citro?n would be in the cards sometime in the future. As with Citro?ns, the future is now.
After selling my 518i, we moved house. While the 205 was/is an admirable transport workhorse, hauling a good amount of our stuff to the current address, it was apparent we don't have anything that can comfortably transport long objects. The 518i couldn't do that either, as it didn't have a folding rear seat. The Saab does, but I don't like to use it when the roads are salted, and the seat doesn't split when it folds. Add this to the fact I'm finally succumbing to the realization a tow hitch isn't that bad to have in one of the cars: with a tow hitch mounted, I could have towed the Polo to the garage myself. Hence, a towing wagon would be joining the ranks at some point. I checked out a Tempra at first, and considered a couple of Saab 9000s, even a Skoda Felicia of all things, but none of those would come as cheap as a Xantia would. Originally, before buying the E34, I drove a maroon Xantia Activa but decided against it. Now, I drove a white 2.0 16v and talked to an acquaintance with another, but with those it was either rust, electrical problems or both that ruled both of those out in the end. Then this came up for sale.
It is a Rouge Pivoire Xantia wagon first registered in Oulu, northern Ostrobothnia June 1997, and it currently has 211k on the clock. Most of those have been racked up by only one owner, who traded it in last December. It passed on to a small-time used Citro?n dealer/parts hound, who advertised it in the local advertisement pages here. There's a stack of receipts following the car, that mention the cam belt at 190k along with recent enough clutch, sphere and exhaust replacements, and the whole stack tallies up to 3k. For a Citro?n that hasn't been worth 3k for a while.
While this Ath?na spec car isn't a 2.0-litre, or a Turbo Activa, or a V6, but a lowly 1.8 16-valve with 112 hp, it has one major trump card that clears the table of all the other Xantias I've examined. It does not have the rear quarter panel rust that plagues Xantias. Muck gathers inside the flank and rots itself out, necessitating a lot of panel and paint work if you want the car looking clean. In this, there's no rust to really speak of elsewhere either; the rockers are healthy and only the passenger side rear arch has some chipping-related rusting going on, on a very small scale.
Inside, it has a worn driver's seat bolster, of which I will need to take care as it's rather ugly. There's a crack in the windshield, but that's not in the driver's direct line of sight. One of the fog lights has cracked, but a tidy one was included in the deal. The front bumper corner has some damage, probably due to the former owner reversing from his spot without detaching the block heater lead. The flanks are straight, there's only one small dent in the passenger side rear arch.
But, with the amount of maintenance already done to it in recent years, it's an interesting replacement for the E34. I would be doing similar mileage per year, and on long drives to Helsinki and back the Hydractive comfort is a definite plus. It's not "too good" to use when the roads are salted, and the relatively humble engine should provide decent fuel economy. Citro?n weirdness isn't all-encompassing here, and due to the driver's airbag being fitted, the steering wheel isn't one-spoke, but I still like the design a lot, and actually prefer it to the five-door Berline. The steering wheel-controlled stereo has an AUX jack, which is crucial. No need for a Kienzle just yet. The tires, on aftermarket-looking 15" 5-spoke alloys are decent enough Bridgestones.
So, what would one of these cost? This exact car, with valid MOT through June, was 800 euros. It's exactly half what the E34 was worth to me, and roughly a third of what the 900S cost. In turn, you could get a metric shitton of 60 euro Polos for that, but a running low-km Polo as clean as mine is pretty much worth the same as this, if not more. I'll need to buff the burgundy paint and source some Alcantara material for the seat, and there's some hoovering and cleaner registration plate ordering to be done. But so far, so good. It drives extremely well, a large portion of the electrics work and I look forward to getting it cleaner.
This post will be updated with the proof pic quite quickly.
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