Citroen XM Forum

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Rob

Heck, Merc doesn't come out of that list too well, does it?

White Exec wrote:Heck, Merc doesn't come out of that list too well, does it?

Stop trying to change the subject. ...

OK, I put my hands up. At least we managed No.10...

Look at all the MUCH BETTER RELIABLE german stuff above it.. amazing..

I see Peter N has left a fair comment below the XM article.

It's about time the XM has a break from this lazy and cliche motoring journalistic point of view. Who cares anymore if it was an unreliable car or not. It's all about the modern rubbish now.
Still it might help keep prices affordable!


VW stuff from what I have read and watched on YouTube, is pretty ropey. Certainly wouldn't touch an FSI or TSI engine.

Most XM have been neglected. Once the neglect is sorted they are generally Ok.

Wills right, most XMs by this point if not in the hands of enthusiasts, have been neglected one way or another.

With regard to reliability, I can honestly say all of my XMs (approaching 20 at this point), have been no less reliable than anything else of similar vintage, in fact they have been more so, by an order of magnitude in most cases, and I've owned a lot of cars (nearly 60 at this point).

For over a decade we've seen comments such as 'The early XMs suffered from massive electrical issues' and 'Unreliability damaged the XM's reputation.'

Maybe I'm uncharacteristically lucky but I've owned numerous Series 1 XMs with the so-called 'massive electrical issues', and not one of them has had a major problem, beyond the usual nonsense of false brake light failure warnings, etc.

Whilst mildly irritating, they hardly count as 'major' problems, the cars remain mobile and functional in the vast majority of cases.

Ciarán

looking at the cars in the list i wonder if the reason for these vehicles appearing is more to do with the type of owner and dealerships that work on them rather than the car itself.

D

That's a really good point, and could explain the apparent neglect of XM and Xantia in the hands of many owners. While many cars can be serviced/repaired adequately by independent repairers, this isn't true of hpn Citroens.

Independents can overlook, leave-well-alone, or fit incorrect items (eg spheres), which wouldn't happen at Cit main dealers, by and large. In some cases, independents will decline to work on them, and this news travels.

Down here, many Xantias were bought new on the back of the hugely successful sales of C15 (and to an extent BX) by owners who had some admiration for the brand. In the case of Xantia, they then discovered that things go wrong (like ride deterioration), and were either reluctant to get such things fixed, objected to fixing such items, or just plain didn't notice the deterioration. Both spheres and strut-tops come into this category.

The result was many examples being driven into the ground. Xantias have disappeared here so fast you wouldn't believe it. Most scrapyards don't even bother to keep them. XM a little different here - most folk couldn't justify the cost - so there never were that many, at least here in southern Spain.