Citroen XM Forum

And it was Mandarin....How could you...

Fascinating story here you have uncovered. You're braver man than me to break up a 24v Matthew. Real shame it couldn't be saved. Wonder if there is anyone out there who would remember them when they were new and shed some light on them.

Got to love the Mandarin!

The wood trim went to Smoothcrusier with the rest of the leather interior Paul and apart from the missing rear cills the whole back end was suspect due to sitting on the bare soil for around four-five years. In addition to the welding the complete respray required could have cost at least 2k, which the car would hardly be worth restored. There were apparently issues with the engine and all the tyres were also rotten with two original alloys missing. It happened that the car could also not be moved from the private driveway and had to be dismantled insitu and the bodyshell then craned over an adjacent wall! A more sensible option might have been to transfer relevant parts to another body, which could still be done, otherwise the spares will keep at least two other cars going. Please be assured that the decision to break was not taken lightly and I would have loved to save the car, had considerations of cost and practicality not entered the equation. As I have since shown, if you really want a sorted and affordable S1 24v, best look abroad!! Regards, Matthew T.

Sounds like you have done the sensible thing Matthew. Just a pity it was one of those Mandarin cars.

My first XM was registered G815TKN. It was a 2 litre Si model. It met a sad end in 2009. The paint was champagne with a Romana velour interior. I bought it for £750 in 2000 with 63,000 miles on the clock. It performed reliably and did numerous 500 mile trips from Cologne to Aarhus. The only odd thing it ever did was have engine hesitation whenever I drove near Boppard in the Rhineland Pflalz region. I never found out what the cause was. It happened one other time on a long run just north of Hamburg.

I wonder if the engine hesitation happened when you drove past a high-powered radio station casalingua?

I remember back in 1976 one of my fellow radio and electronics apprentices designed and built an electronic ignition system for his Hillman Avenger. It worked well until...

As part of our apprentice training we did a week at the BBC World Service transmitter at Crowborough (now long gone sadly) and the aforementioned electronic ignition worked perfectly until within sight of the station and then failed - only to work again when well out of the way of the station.

The huge amount of RF energy from the station was the cause. It got into the electronics and gave it a right case of the heebie jeebies... I've heard tales that other early in-car electronics suffered very similarly there at at other transmitting stations.

Other strange happenings around the station was being able to hear the BBC World Service on the perimeter fence during damp weather due to the 'rusty bolt effect' rectifying the RF signal back into audio!

Happy days I still miss my time working on big, high power radio transmitters That's proper electronics!

casalingua wrote:My first XM was registered G815TKN. It was a 2 litre Si model. It met a sad end in 2009. The paint was champagne with a Romana velour interior. I bought it for £750 in 2000 with 63,000 miles on the clock.

My first XM was a white Si bought in August 1991 and traded in Jan 1994 for my 2nd Xm. It had done 50,000 reasonably trouble free miles by then.

CitroJim wrote:I wonder if the engine hesitation happened when you drove past a high-powered radio station casalingua?

This used to happen to Merc Sl's on a certain part of the M25.....but they completely conked out!