Citroen XM Forum

IM OUT...

I give up.. Not worried about discussing it anymore. Its too complex for me to worry about..

The V6-24V was put on general release in France in July 1990.
I suspect that the first demonstrator RHD ones were produced as part of this production line probably before the end of June 1990.
GxxxBJB was a Citroen UK block registration of 999 cars.
That gives 2 months at least to get the 6 press cars into the country, plates on and DVLA notified of car details.

John

The colour scheme for this version of the car was an afterthought. All the design work shows the car was intended to have black mirrors. And the black rub-strip along the waist was also part of the over-all plan. Painted in body colour these parts spoil the proportions and make the vehicle seem shorter than it is. The XM was taller than the CX and to hide this the styling emphasises the horizontal elements. Of course, I don´t imagine this has any bearing on the scarcity of early V6s. I was just surprised to see Citroen did this on Series 1 cars. I had wrongly thought it was the face-lifted S2 cars that had this unfortunate feature. Aren´t the early V6 engines derivatives of the Douvrin V6?

No, the early V6 is the PRV joint engine from the 70's...

The Douvrin engines NEVER got near the XM. They had peugeots XU family of four cylinder engines.

The Douvrin engines stopped at the CX

The colour scheme for this version of the car was an afterthought.

I do find it odd that there was such a significant change in design only one year into production after five years of development and it would be interesting to find out why that happened.

Painted in body colour these parts spoil the proportions and make the vehicle seem shorter than it is.

For myself I like both solutions and on the balance perhaps prefer the more subtle contrast of the unpainted bumpers etc. against darker colours. Regards, Matthew T.

The "Colour Codeing" was put on the 24v model to distungish it from the lower models.. as the "24v Model" was a model on its own right.

It was initially higher then the SEi model. It was then in 1992 that colour coding was added to the SEi model, thus the 24v model loosing its unique identity..

My 24V brochure has a date of 10.6.90 on it. So that would certainly make them available in the later part of 1990.

citroenxm wrote:The "Colour Codeing" was put on the 24v model to distungish it from the lower models.. as the "24v Model" was a model on its own right.

It was initially higher then the SEi model. It was then in 1992 that colour coding was added to the SEi model, thus the 24v model loosing its unique identity..

That's exactly how I have always seen it Paul, your totally right. I think it was a new trend back then to colour code to make cars look more special and expensive. They had to make the 24V stand out form the rest of the range. Colour coding was how to do it.

I guess it all revolved around the introduction of the 24v engine as explained by Paul that was not quite ready at the launch as I think it was for the 605. Regards, Matthew T.

It could very well be that. Or / and they simply had to concentrate on the rest of the range as this was more profitable and in more demand. Introducing a special version after the initial hype gives more attention to the range leader.