Hi there.
After watching this forum for several months now, I feel I know some of the more active members . My purpose was to get a feel for the likely problems and how difficult it would be to solve them or whether in fact ,to buy one at all. Well at one point I told my better half "there's no way we're getting an XM you should see the problems they get !". But you all know how it is and today I took charge of a '98 2.1 TD Hatchback in Blue.(though as usual the RP no. is Sept 96 !) Guess what, I had my first problem, the boot wouldn't open. So there I was climbing into the boot from inside the car to release it ! After removing the mechanism and some WD 40, all worked - except that is, the key lock on the tailgate. Well that's something for tomorrow.
regards Tony

Great stuff.

Soon you'll be like me, with a huge list of annoying minor faults!

Welcome Tony

I am very pleased to see that someone has bought a diesel, I was begining to think the there were only V6s left! and also that it s a late 2.1 and if its manual, almost perfect, if it were an estate, absolubtly perfect, I have been looking for a late 2.1 td manual estate for a year or more, and still am. There are a few out there but they very rarely come on to the market.

My own personal opinion is that the 2.1 td manual is the best of the bunch, yours will be electronically managed which is good as far as efficiency is concerned but a bit more complicated. You will find the fuel consumption is excellent, depending, of course on how you drive it, I frequently get in excess of 800 miles on a tankful. The engine is virtually unbreakable, as long as its looked after, expect to replace the head gasket at about 150k, but nothing much else is likely to go wrong.

As far as the rest of the car is concerned, I doubt if all the electrics work, but thats par for the course, but they are a fantistic car, I can find nothing on the market to replace it.

Enjoy.

Peter.N.