A Scottish acquaintance bought an ex mobility C5, " because it was cheap", despite sending the long list of car by car faults.
Latest faults are that the rear wiper starts up when any door is opened.
Oh and the drivers door handle snapped off.
But it was cheap.
Edited by Webmaster on 28/03/2008 at 10:09
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The door handles have been "improved." The wiper sounds like a BSI glitch - either a soft-reboot or a updated software download needed.
I hope he's not 100 miles from a good dealer?
They're cheap for a reason....
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Screwloose......Are they really that bad? Im quite scared to hear you say that because I currently own two C5's! What's gonna happen?
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happytorque
They do have their little foibles. They bomb on residuals because they are far too complex and the French can't make electrics to save their lives. One major fault and they're dead.
If they'd only kept everything nice and simple, the cars themselves are not too bad - it's all the unnecessary extras that constantly go wrong. They should leave the cutting-edge stuff to the Japanese and work with back-edge, well-proven, well-built, systems.
With their history [2CV etc.] Citroen were perfectly positioned to exploit the gaping market for an easily-maintained, simple diesel. With a bit of head development; the IDI diesel was quite good enough to keep going for a lot longer - but they went for high-tech, not well-tried.....
"Alive with technology..." Not if it won't work.....
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Screwloose, Ive had both of mine from new. The first one is just over 5 years old and its a 2 litre HDI. Done 52,000 miles with no real trouble. Still looks and drives like new. Had 3 'Comm 2000' units within the first 6 months, but its been well behaved ever since. Got lots of 'automatic stuff' like lights / wipers etc. All seems to work though. The only suspension trouble ive had is if you park the car with the steering on full lock, then the front end raises and lowers itself uncommanded. The simple cure for this is to just turn the wheel to dead ahead and it doesnt do it.
My second one is a 2.0 litre petrol Auto which is only a year old and thats been just fine. However its got the AL4 gearbox and ive been told they are absolute rubbish and dont last very well. Oh well, we will have to see what happens.
Youre right about residuals though....they drop like a stone. Good job I bought both cars with a truely massive discount.
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It seems that most C5s are OK - however when they go bad, then seem to go very very bad - and there are enough of them to make an impact on the 2nd hand value (well that and the Chevrons on the front!). There were plenty of HDis about with 150 - 200k miles about when I was thinking about buying one - so they can't all be bad. Caveat emptor though - I certainly wouldn't buy a cheap poorly looked after example!
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Richard's right; by no means all give problems - it's the ones that do give £££ nightmares that sully the whole marque, particularly when the dealers repeatedly fail to fix them.
The basic HDI engine is indeed very long-lasting - but the old one was even tougher and didn't cost a fortune to fix it's gremlin-ridden fuelling. Is that progress?
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