looking for a car with soft suspension (hence boring handling) and small engine

cyclonebri1 · 15 January 2012 at 10:38AM

pitkin2020 wrote: »

I agree and TBH the internet can be hard to sift through at times with the amount of information available. Its hard to decipher if 10% or 90% of people have had all of these problems listed on sites.

Its only recently I have bothered to research cars prior to buying and I would say its only the last 2 cars I have bought out of 20 that I bothered to look for common faults before buying instead of after lol. The cars prior to this have been hit and miss, some good some god awful. One thing I have had with all the french cars though is electrical problems, I have had it on other marks too but the french cars were a 100% hit rate on electrical faults for me so it has put me off them.

A friend has a citreon xsara (not the people carrier) and before christmas lost all the dash lights, head lights, radio and indicators. Fuses were all checked and found to be fine so had an auto elec out he can't find the fault, another auto elec out still can't find the fault. All the fuses have been replaced as a precaution. If the fault can't be found the car will have to be scrapped as its undriveable.

Out of our cars mine has actually been the worst, but luckily I know my way round cars so it has cost me nothing. They do have weird electrics, if you almost stall it on start up, (quite easy when you have your foot on the clutch pedal to enable start up), any number of fault lights will come on, luckily next time it starts they clear. The maindealer changed 3 yes 3 turbo pressure sensors under waranty before it was found to be a bad connection at the ECU. Again the fact that I found the problem says more about the dealerships than the car.
It has a mad appetite for dipped headlight bulbs, don't get me started on that one.

The real problem though is not it's realiability, it's the expected reliability based on all the stuff read on the net, you almost think it's bound to breakdown everytime out;)

almillar · 16 January 2012 at 2:57PM

Bigger cars are more comfortable. If you're looking at a 306, then for that money, a Citroen Xantia would be a better bet. Hydropneumatic Citroens (that includes the C5 but not the Xsara) are the comfiest cars out there.