Citroën

These pages contain pictures of my favourite car brand: Citroën. Also available are some nice pictures I took at the CitroMobile expositions, a yearly recurring event in the Veemarkthallen in Utrecht, the Netherlands.

1993: Volvo 340 "Winner"

Our very first car was a Volvo 340 "Winner" (KF-77-PH, the name didn't quite fit the car by the way) which was a little bit of a mistake. We did however reach the south of France with it and returned home without any trouble (but with aching arms for the lack of power steering).

1995: Citroën BX 1.9 TRS BREAK

Our second car was a Citroën BX 1.9 TRS BREAK (PH-30-BF). A very nice car but with a lot, and I mean a LOT of problems. We had it all: breaking down right in the middle of a busy crossing; loss of hydraulic pressure just when you're in a bend leaving a highway; the car refused to start almost weekly especially when you accidentally touched the accelerator before starting the car; overheating in traffic jams (making it necessary to turn up the heating system to max, especially in the middle of summer); broken dynamo; broken water pump; loosing the accelerator-spring from the carburettor causing the engine to rev at maximum speed only; refusing to idle, making driving through town especially challenging; breaking of hydraulic pipe on the front suspension causing a very big green stain on a parking lot (it was snowing the day after, luckily for us); breaking down linkage to the gear box leaving only the third and fourth gears for driving; breaking of the clutch cable which made starting the car a very delicate process; and so on.
Most of the problems were due to the fact that the valves were worn and the carburettor was leaking all over the place. I had the carburettor replaced and another cylinder head fitted after which the car drove quite well and the starting troubles were past tense. The trouble was that the rest of the car started breaking down and when in the end I managed to damage the side of the car quite nicely by just not missing a wall it was time for another car.

1999: Citroën Xm 2.0i 16V SX

You probably wouldn't believe it reading our previous Citroën experiences but somehow we got hooked to the brand. The most beautiful car in our view was the Citroën Xm so we went on the lookout for one.
We found one in 1999, it was a beautiful green 1994 Citroën Xm 2.0i 16V SX (JP-VT-93). This car has (almost) never let us down. And what a space! And the quiet!
No major breakdowns, mainly regular maintenance. In fact this car was much cheaper to run than our previous car.
We only had two strange problems with it. The first one was that at some time the engine's cooling fans started a live of their own deciding to switch on and off randomly. Normally not much of a problem but in the summer when engine cooling is quite important the fans just didn't switch on when required. In the end this was solved by opening (using a saw) the "Bitron Video" module under the glove compartment and resoldering it. The problem never came back. The second one was that the car's idle speed sometimes led a live of its own. Not just the idle speed, sometimes when driving 50 in town the car would suddenly accelerate! Very scary! Solved by cleaning all the computer's connections and cleaning the stepper motor. Oh I almost forgot the third "problem", every now and then (happened four times or so in total) the car just refused to start, solved every time by resetting the car's computer. When I told this to my garage they said "So why is this a problem then? Just reset the computer when it happens!" and they were right.

2004: Citroën Xm V6 Exclusive

All in all we were very satisfied with this car. The only reason why, in 2004, we decided to look for another car was that we were afraid that major maintenance might come some day. In 2004 the car was 10 years old with 250,000 kilometres on the clock and we went on the lookout for another car.
It was my wife who by sheer luck found a beautiful 1996 Xm in the showroom of a garage here in Eindhoven. We went to look and fell in love with it. It's a Belgium import Citroën Xm V6 Exclusive (78-PR-DP) and we bought it trading in our beloved Xm. The V6 Exclusive is much more luxurious than the Xm we had, it has all the options there were in 1996. It also has DIRAVI which is something to get used to: it's a special kind of power steering that's self-centring and that has no direct contact between the steering wheel and the wheels. Very nice when you're used to it but very scary when you experience it for the first time!
It's hard to believe how much difference there is between our previous Xm and this one. This one drives nicer, has even more grip, is much much quiter (the engine does only about 1,100 revs per second when doing 50 kph in town), there's climate control which is very nice, everything is electrical (and works, even!), the leather-and-alcantara seets sit better, it's a completely different car. Oh and it's also heavier and uses more fuel of course. So far we're extremely satisfied with this car but it's early days of course. We hope it's at least as trouble-free as our previous Xm,