All White in the sun, XM moves from Guildford to Andalusia

[White Exec]

It was only when buying our XM (almost new, and from our local and trusted Citroen dealer) in the UK back in Jan'99 that we discovered what a slight oddity it was. First registered on 1 Dec 1998, it just didn't tally with the sales brochure. It was all there, 1200mi on the clock, but . . . no CD changer, no cruise, and, oddest of all, a grey suede and leather interior! We rapidly did a bit of detective work before buying (almost £10k below list price), and discovered that S472LTR was built on 21 June 1996, and was one of thirty XMs that Slough brought into the UK shortly afterwards. It was, apparently, stored under cover until being passed on to a South of England dealer two years later. A regular customer (a new Citroen every 12 months!) let them down, and so the car was finally first registered on 1.12.98 to the dealer. Four weeks later it had done 1200 miles. By the second week of January, it was ours, with CD changer, cruise and towbar all thrown in.

That was January 1999. Since then it has provided daily commuter transport for my wife, and whisked us all over the place on business and holiday, often with caravan in tow - Scotland, Ireland, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Corsica, Spain and Portugal.

We both retired and moved home to Andalusia in 2004, and the XM came with us, now re-plated (at unbelievable expense), and having undergone quite a few interesting repairs and mods. These, I promise, will be the subject of some other posts.

Chris Gregory

[Peter.N.]

Hi Chris

Firstly, welcome to the club. I have been running XMs for about 14 years and think that they are the bees knees, my personal choise is the 2.1 manual estate, the comfort is legendery but the space that the estate provides in combination with an attainable 50+ mpg figure makes it iresistable.

Your 'unusual spec' model is not all that unusual, although it had obviously been in store for more than the general time. I have had four all registered in Jan '96, spec was as '95 but there were differences between all of them, only one had a keypad and the others had mechanical difference.

It certainly seems that you are enjoying XM ownership, I know I have and still am.

Peter

[xmexclusive]

Hi Chris

Pleased to see you posting here.
Hope the 2.5 now goes trouble free.

John