Xms For Sale On E-bay, Where will it all end?

[Peter.N.]

I have just been looking in the 'Citroen XM' section on ebay and was amazed to find 22, yes 'twenty two' XMs of various sorts for sale, no Mk2 manual 2.1 td estates though of course! Mostly petrol and mostly auto's. Is this the last great clear out. I very rarely see another XM on the road down here, they are getting like the CXs, we flash our headlights at each other! I did see an estate just off junc 25 of the M5 on the Chard road on Sunday, wasn't you was it?

The Mk2s particularly are such well made cars that it seems a crying shame that any, diesels and estates in particular are being scrapped. The last one I sold still looked good inside and out at nearly 300k. There is nothing equivilent in comfort or space on the market now, except perhaps the Merc E Class, but for what it would cost you for a secondhand one, you could rebuild and XM and it would probably be just as reliable!

I think that they are very soon going to be a collectors car, so buy a few for spares while you have the chance!

I was looking at a restored PA Cresta the other day...........

Peter.N.

[Bigmixer]

Peter, for what it's worth an E class 300TD was my dream car. To cut a long story short I bought one, £18k's worth and 4 months later had gone back to my 2.5 TD estate and disposed of the Merc.!!! It was not a patch on the XM for road-holding, brakes or fuel economy but did have a lovely engine.
Bigmixer
PS moral= be careful what you wish for, you may get it.

[Peter.N.]

Bigmixer - Thanks for that info. I had briefly thought about an E300, one of our neighbors has got one and it seems to be the only one comparable in size to the XM. Then I started looking at Merc forums and found that they go rusty and break down nearly as often as Citroens!

I also checked out the A6, not quite as big as the XM and very economical but a terrible ride.

The only one I might possibly consider is the BMW 530d, the smallest of the estates, not big enough for me at the moment, reasonable ride and fuel consumption, terrific performance and the engine is the right way round, you can get to everything!...unless some one tells me something dreadful about them.

But for the forseeable future I will hold on to my XM, I fitted a new head gasket last year and have since had 20k of virtually trouble free motoring.

Thanks for your £18k's worth of market research on my behalf!

Peter.N.

[noz]

Hi Peter,

Its probably a sad reflection that the 10-12 year old cars are coming to the end of their useful (cf economically viable) lifespan. Every MOT brings death that bit closer. You don't have to have an accident to write off a car now. The cost of a few repairs needed to get a car through an MOT can cause it to tip the balance in favour of an uneconomic repair. It then ends up in the scrappy or on ebay (soon there will be no difference). A few ebayers have discovered the art of buying cheap XM's and breaking them, selling each individual part. The principle here is that each part is worth more individually than when part of a complete, fully functioning vehicle. This philosophy is semi-sustainable due to the new price that Citroen charge for the parts. However, at the same time there is a modern tendency not to repair cars at all and just throw them away as soon as the ashtray is full.

The whole concept of cars has changed since I was a nipper. Scrap yards used to be places where you went to get spare parts for your car. Now its sheer pot luck if you can find the car you are looking for on any specific visit. Cars used to lie in scrap yards for years slowly being cannibalised. Now its 4 weeks between crusher visits.

The skills needed to repair cars at a DIY level are dying out fast. The modern chav knows how to put new go-faster stripes on his burberry baseball cap but change a set of plugs???

Phew !! Rant over - its been a hard week.

Cheers

noz

[Peter.N.]

Hi Noz

I agree entirely. I used to spend half my life in scrapyards when I used to to diesel conversions. There was a lovely one near Bridport, about 20 acres, it was an old flax mill (next door to 'River cottage') The latest cars would be near the buildings and at the extremity down by the river there were pre war cars, this is going back to the '70s mind. Its got a housing estate on it now.

Most cars there then were rusted out but had probably only done about 60k, I ran all my cars from the spares. particularly the CXs.

Now its not rust but sometimes only relativly minor mechanical failure that leads to there demise, due mainly to the high cost of garage repairs. I wouldn't have been able to afford to run the Citroens had I not done my own.

I shall keep mine going as long as possible but will inevitably have to change one day...... I wish I had bought that one in Skelmersdale.

Peter.N.