All families have their problem child. In the small household of the big Citroëns, they all came out with a number of birth defects, but for the longest time, the public was willing to forgive these niggles. Early Traction Avants were notoriously fragile, but they were revolutionary and chic. Early DSs would sometimes blow their hydropneumatic system, but they were cutting-edge and radical. Early CXs rusted as soon as they saw a rain cloud, but they were so comfortable and stylish. However, when the XM plopped out in 1989, the buying public was no longer willing to take the rough with the smooth.
So why was the XM a flop? On the one hand, it was too expensive: a base-spec XM cost 50% more than its CX equivalent, so naturally there were fewer buyers who could afford one. But the real culprit was the bad rep the XM got in its infancy. This is a common enough malady – GM, Ford, BL, NSU and countless others made the same mistake: a good car coupled with a fatally botched launch leaves the company trying feverishly to address a myriad of flaws, amid throngs of angry customers and panicked dealers.
Our feature car is not one of those early XMs. It’s a series 2 model – those where nearly all the kinks were ironed out. Early cars are far less common nowadays, obviously. So what happened to the once-revered XM – the 1990 European COTY, no less – for it to turn from an appealing executive cruiser into a citrus-flavoured E-segment PR nightmare?
Talbot Tagoras of the ‘90s: by screwing up one platform, PSA managed to shoot themselves in both feet.
By the late ‘80s, the PSA Group had started to recover from the Talbot episode. The future looked bright again – the Peugeot 205, the 309 and the Citroën BX were helping the company out of its financial hole and the new small cars (Citroën AX and Peugeot 106) were off to a promising start. But the drastic cutbacks of the 1980-85 period were to leave a mark on cars that would only appear farther down the line. It so happens that PSA’s two flagships, the Peugeot 605 and the Citroën XM, were conceived during this difficult period. Problems encountered in utero can lead to developmental issues, as was the case here.
Clays dated October 1984 made by in-house designers Michel Albertus and Jean Giret
Peugeot-Citroën’s new E-segment programme was launched in 1983. From the get go, the two cars were to share the same floorpan, engines and transmission, but other elements would be entirely different. The Peugeot 605 looked like a slightly bigger 405 and featured a conventional suspension (MacPherson struts in front and double wishbones at the rear), whereas the Citroën was to have a completely separate shape and employ the marque’s signature hydropneumatic system on all four wheels, with semi-trailing arms at the rear. The internal codename for the XM, in those days, was “Projet V,” soon numbered as V80.
Another V80 design by Jean Giret, dated November 1984, with a lingering CX aftertaste
There were several in-house V80 styling proposals from Citroën’s Vélizy design centre. It seems that PSA decision-makers were keen to keep some of the marque’s most iconic design features, such as the fastback rear, aerodynamic nose and rear wheel spats, but it was difficult for the Vélizy boys to really come up with something suitably novel. They were more redesigning the CX than creating a new car.
Bertone Y30 design, 1985
In the Peugeot tradition, a competing design was commissioned to an Italian design house. Bertone and Marcello Gandini, who had just helped make the BX such a hit, were roped back in, though Gandini was now working as an independent consultant for Renault, so it’s unclear to me whether he had much of a hand in the XM’s design. Theirs was called “Projet Y” (a.k.a Y30, but no relation to Nissan) and, at least initially, the Italians ran into the same issues as the in-house team.
Belgian designer Marc Deschamps, working at Bertone, found the XM’s signature beltline
Eventually, the Bertone design got the nod, thanks in no small part to the new beltline that their design proposed. The significant kick up in the rear finally gave the project a distinctive feature, along with the wedge-like front end’s very thin headlamps and grille combo. The DS’s shape had been tapered down; the SM and CX were more horizontal, with a Kamm tail. The XM would follow the ‘80s trend and lift its tail up – only this time, it would have a rear hatch.
The choice of engines was a foregone conclusion: base-spec models would remain in the 2-litre bracket, with the Douvrin engine – carbureted, fuel-injected or turbocharged according to taste. Two Diesels, a 2.1 with or without turbo (81 and 108hp, respectively) and a turbo-only 2.5 giving out 127hp, were slated to appear – both excellent. At the top of the range, the infamous PRV would make its debut on a Citroën. This was the first 6-cyl. Cit since the SM, showing the marque’s intention that the XM was to be a more sophisticated and expensive car than the CX. The fuel-injected OHC 3-litre PRV could be ordered with a normal set of 12 valves, providing 165hp, or with 24 valves and 197hp. The PRV was discontinued after MY 1997, replaced by a completely new 2.9 litre DOHC V6, also seen on the 605 and the new 406 Coupé. All models came standard with a 5-speed manual, but a 4-speed ZF auto was optional.
Suspension-wise, the third generation of Citroën’s famous hydropneumatic party trick. They now called it Hydractive, which meant the system was hooked up to a computer and cancelled the previous generations’ tendency towards body roll in corners. The XM also had variable-powered steering, but instead of the Diravi seen on the SM and CX, this one was also computer-controlled. The brakes featured ABS on all but the lowest-spec versions.
Almost final pre-production car, 1988
All in all, when the XM was launched in April 1989, it seemed like an impressively complete package. And in many ways, it was. The car looked like no other, the suspension was supple but far more supportive than before, the V6 versions were supremely fast and the amount of toys one could have (for a price) was just astounding. Here is where things went awry: the electronics were designed by monkeys, put together by blind rats and used components sourced in someone’s garden shed. In the early models, the amount of faults that the system came up with was truly shocking. The same issues blighted the Peugeot 605 as well, of course – they had the same simian-devised/rodent-assembled computers and connectors to contend with. This, coupled with the model’s all-too-close resemblance to the popular 405, ensured that the 605 ended up being an even greater failure than the XM.
Shoddy assembly was another big issue. This affected the body, the drivetrain and was especially noticeable in the interior, which would rattle itself to pieces in short order. Speaking of which, this is one aspect we haven’t yet touched upon. The interior of the XM had its merits. The cabin was extremely spacious. The low beltline, copious glass area and thin pillars made for unparalleled visibility, even for the time. The seats, the A/C, the lack of road noise – those were all excellent. But the design and perceived quality of the dash were somewhere between mediocre and abysmal.
The first series dash looked a mite cheap, even in the higher-trim models like the one above. It was a perennial issue with Peugeots since the ‘70s – and one that the firm failed to address for a very long time. Citroën interiors usually had iffy quality as well, but at least they had style and innovation. In the XM, it seemed that Peugeot had taken over the reins completely and thrown the baby with the bathwater. The lone remnant of the Citroën idiosyncrasy of yore was the single-spoke steering wheel. But take a look at the Talbot Tagora’s dash again, and you’ll see the prototype for the XM’s, ten years before the fact. The controls used to have charm and quirkiness in the CX, but in the XM, they were just squeezed randomly all over the place.
The Series 2, which arrived in 1994, addressed some of the criticism by putting some ointment on the rash of switches that had plagued the original dash. Things looked a bit better on that front. However, the advent of airbags meant the demise of the trademark steering wheel, replaced by a rather boring-looking unit. Build quality was better all around in these later XMs, but whatever traces of Citroën the original had were now erased. It was impossible to have it both ways, it seems.
The first couple of model years of the XM were very successful sales-wise, but word soon got around: XMs looked good, drove great and seemed fine at first, but problems would come soon, and in bewildering numbers. Some defects were apparent within the warranty period, others reared their ugly head only after a few years of ownership. A few examples: camshafts were fragile on 24-valve V6s and could destroy the engine, electric windows and seats were glitch-prone, the Hydractive suspension switched to Sport mode without warning, seals came undone and panels were often misaligned (especially on the rear doors and hatch), window sill trim warped prematurely, brake and cabin lights worked when they felt like it, code-protected ignition systems failed due to poor quality keypads (which prevented the car from being started and is apparently very tricky to bypass or repair), fifth gear could become inoperative, some turbos died early… clutch issues, suspicious drivetrain noises, stuttering EFIs, erroneous computer data and alloy wheels that oxidized in months completed the picture – it was bad. Very bad. Even by Citroën standards.
In 1991, the extremely capacious XM Break, built by Heuliez, was launched at the Frankfurt Motor Show. Citroën, by this time, had addressed a fair number (though not all) of the car’s most egregious gremlins, but it was too late. The reputational damage was already done. Production fell off the proverbial cliff, never to recover.
A big table full of detailed production stats is worth a thousand words, which is good, as this post is already getting a bit long. The 1994 refresh, heralding the true niggle-free XM (well, almost), had absolutely zero impact on sales, which were on a continuous and irreversible slide since their 1990 high point. Just over 300,000 saloons and 30,000 wagons were made in a full decade on the assembly line, whereas the DS and the CX both scored over one million units during their admittedly longer lifespans. The product planners doubtless would have liked to have stretched the model’s lifespan by a few years, but with such abysmal numbers, there really was no other way but to euthanize the XM several years before a true successor (the C6, launched in 2005) could be fielded.
Tissier’s peculiar XM limos — above: Majesté; below: Altesse
Few special bodies were ever attempted on the XM, compared to previous big Citroëns. Pierre Tissier made a few super-stretched six-/eight-wheelers, as he had done on the DS and CX, but he also made a few stretched limousines with four wheels only: the Altesse (+55cm, three made) and the Majesté (+107cm, four made).
Heuliez’s XM specials – above: armour-plated 1992 LWB “Palace”; below: curiously shorter 1996 “Limousine”
A few coachbuilders operated a less dramatic stretch of the XM, adding anything from 10 to 30 cm to the car’s rear doors. Heuliez tried this out a couple times, using a wagon base, and the product of these efforts were occasionally used for presidential transport, but the cars were never bought. Even the Élysée was weary of the ill-fated Citroën.
It’s worth noting that Citroën themselves mooted a three-box version of the XM, albeit on the normal-length wheelbase. This car was supposed to herald the marque’s return on the US market, after over 15 years of absence. Somehow, PSA figured that this was not a wise move, and they pulled out of the North American market altogether shortly thereafter. Oops again.
Nowadays, XMs are practically worthless and therefore dying at a prodigious rate. People who still own one are usually passionate about them and claim they are the most undervalued hydro Citroëns ever made. This may change in the next decade or so – the Traction, the DS and the CX all went through a similar period in their day. But unlike its illustrious forbearers, the XM has a gut full of half-baked electronic pasta that can be a real headache to sort out. Forget the kooky suspension spheres and the poor quality plastic – those are solvable issues, but shoddy electronics are a nightmare beyond any mechanic’s best efforts.
It is therefore likely that the XM will become a rare car in short order. The wagons are already very scarce, being few in numbers to start off with, but bog-standard carbureted 2-litre series 1 saloons are also becoming exceedingly difficult to find (not that you’d want one: with only 106-112hp, they’re a bit on the lethargic side). Diesels are long-lived and V6 models still command a premium, especially the 24-valve PRVs, but those are fragile and quite thirsty.
And then, there’s the issue of esthetics. Try as I might, I cannot find these as exciting as other big hydro Citroëns, including the C6. This restyled version is especially bland, in my view, with its Xantia-like snout and generic interior. I’ve been in a couple of XMs in my day – they’re smooth and spacious for sure, but they’re also unpleasantly cheap and neither interesting nor engaging.
Seems the owner of our feature car is in agreement, too. Self-deprecating humour is a fairly widespread trait among Citroën enthusiasts. I wouldn’t necessarily agree with the sticker on this car, but it’s a fact that the XM, despite over 100 prototypes and the combined talents of Gandini, Bertone and the in-house styling team, falls short of looking spectacular. And if a big Citroën fails at that, then it’s not really worthy of the name.
Related post:
Cohort Classic: Citroën XM – Its Three Predecessors were Hard Acts to Follow, by PN
Already there arent many here they look remarkably like the smaller cheaper more reliable Xantia, But the bugs were fixed most of the things that plagued the XM are present in the C5 Ive got and everything works just fine the computer controlled self leveling suspension does its thing the automatic wipers and lights function as they should I replaced the window master control switch with on for a 407 because thats all I could get but the windows work in fact everything works and the car flicked over 322,000kms this week, mine is a rare manual but that should not help, The only replacement for this car when that inevitably does happen will be another one, later model probably with less kms but there is plenty of life left in this car
One of the few cars where the factory saloon looks better than the wagon as well as any of the coachbuilt variants. Gee that 605 was a bitsa – the platform of the XM, the body of the 164 and the face of the 405. Like Bryce, I see very few of these in Melbs now; certainly fewer than the C5 and C6. IIRC Marc Deschamps was ex-Renault.
And the pre-CC effect, parked two minutes from here on a walk just three days ago, a black S1 in excellent order! (No phone – the weight makes my dumb shorts constantly want to meet my shoes). It looked remarkably low by today’s standards.
I was rather struck by the unlikelihood that any of the miniscule number that came to Oz still existed, but alas, not by the style, and never was.
I’ve also seen a couple around Melbourne—the silver one twice (Hawthorn and Kew) plus the black one in Alphington. As you’d expect for a car like this in Australia, it appears to belong to a brand enthusiast, judging by the other Citroëns parked across the road; they were both in the kind of suburbs where obscure upmarket cars seem to congregate.
I do, however, remember driving into Cape Paterson to visit my grandad and catching something even more rare; as we turned the corner into town, there was a station wagon parked in one of the first houses. I never saw it again in all the other times I’ve been down there; this is going back twenty years or so to when I was primary school–aged, so it must have made an impression on me….!
Being born around the time these were released, they’ve always appealed to me. As others said, it’s almost like an unrealistic vision of what future cars would look like, which is quite often a great ‘time capsule‘ of the era in which it is conceived rather than any great prediction of the future.
I know there is a pair of them (early burgundy and later navy blue) regularly parked in Hawthorn. Rare to see a pair of them together
Being well accustomed to all big Citroëns, I do agree that the XM is visually the most un-engaging of them all. It‘s design is, as Paul once wrote in an article about the CX too much in the „fashion“ of its time and not enough „fashion-forward“. Still, I think the design is quite unique and works much better in the metal than on photographs.
So while it is true with all big Citroëns that they need to be driven and lived with to be fully appreciated, this is especially true with the less loved one, the XM. I find that a sorted XM is a spectacularly wonderful road car. It’s quiet, relaxed, super-comfy, roomy and in V6 guise even quite fast (though probably not RONIN-style fast … funny that reference was omitted in the write-up!). I know a few owners and none of them would even think of replacing it with anything else (than another big Citroën, that is).
Technically, the XM stands out in being the last Citroën with one central hydraulic circuit. It is, so to say, the last direct descendant of the DS. And FWIW: the first XM‘s were in fact delivered with the CX’s DIRAVI until its replacement was ready.
To paraphrase The Simpson’s, yesterday’s car of tomorrow…today!
It looks like a ‘70s idea of what cars would look like in the ‘90s. I can’t believe it came out at the same time as the Miata and Mercedes R129 – those fit in with modern traffic (as does the Peugeot 605), while the XM looks like it belongs in a museum in comparison. Take that as you will.
What a shame, it really was an interesting car, in its way. There is something almost British in the way this story went – one of those tales that begins with bright hope but goes hopelessly tragic somewhere along the way.
Yes, if the French and their European brethren would not put up with their issues, this thing would have been DOA in the US where there is so much less patience for automotive breakdown.
I kind of like it, at least for one of those sharp, creasy 80s designs. And a single spoke steering wheel with an air bag would have been so cool!
I’ve seen a grand total of one, in Canberra of course – a Francophile paradise away from corrosive salt air. One Australian tragic’s experience here:
https://www.tradeuniquecars.com.au/feature-cars/1212/citroen-xm
I find the first generation appealing, especially the interior. I can’t speak to its actual usability but the styling of the dashboard works for me.
No mention of the XM’s party piece, the second rear window that could be raised when loading (if needed) or lowered to give the increased silence of a sedan and/or keep wind, cold, and drafts out when the hatch is opened? I’ve never actually seen it or used in person and am curious if it was really a useful feature or not.
I was expecting something more complicated:
I have both a CX and an XM (’87 Prestige, ’92 V6). The XM has much lower mileage… yet it is almost completely inferior to the CX. The only real progress is the V6 and 4-speed transmission, an improvement over my CX’s 2.5 liter 4-cyl and 3-speed auto. (If only I had a CX with a turbo and a stick, it would be the clear winner.)
The XM is weird enough to be unreliable, but not weird enough to be special. I happily throw money at the CX to keep it going, but the XM is rotting away in the garage because I know that even if I fix the leaking steering rack, I won’t enjoy it nearly as much as the CX.
Having said that, if any CC’er wants to adopt my XM and give it a good home, I would be happy to let it go. It’s in Oklahoma (of all places!).
You should write a “For Sale” post on the XM if you’re so inclined. Somebody may well want it and you’re more or less equidistant from anywhere in the US for pickup/transport. It’s too bad that Ed just spent his money on the ’86 Taurus, you could have had that wad o’ cash in your pocket instead 🙂
Thank you for the suggestion… it’s worth a shot! How do I do that?
Start by emailing Paul using the contact link above and check out the Writer’s Guide. https://www.curbsideclassic.com/writers-guide/
It is not difficult to do, but far easier to actually write it within the site than to submit something written in another program due to something happening to the formatting depending on where it’s written.
I don’t want to speak for Paul but I’d suggest if he doesn’t email back within 24hrs, try again, sometimes they don’t go through but you will get a response.
I’ll get in touch with you.
I was offered an XM recently with leaking injector pump 2.5 diesel turbo engine 5 speed manual one owner since new oddly enough it lived next door to my VW nutter friend, I turned t down as I simply dont need more cars and od course that when good ones cheap and easy to fix come out of the woodwork even for $1000 and a weekend on the spanners I couldnt justify it.
With the 1994 refresh, Citroen cut some corners in the chosen materials and rustproofing of the rockerpanels. Severe rust, unseen from the outside, can make these series 2 even more worthles than the series 1 …
Remember how camakers got a bit peeved with (costly) Pininfarina’s habit of designing them a lovely car, only to have the design house move a line about here or there and sell the same thing to their competitors shortly thereafter?
Well, it seems Bertone also cottoned on to that way of getting the cash.
Daewoo, you see, employed them to put a body on the old J-car platform, and released the result one year after the XM. It was sold here as an Espero, quickly renamed the Despero, not in the Australian tradition of affectionately mocking nicknames but in an honest appraisal of who you’d have to be to enjoy driving it. Not a good car at all, then, and clothed in a very familiar and expensive – if rather tasteless – suit.
Yes, the mighty Citroen, once leaders in style, were left trying to flog an $80K car here – a car already known to be a saggy-bottomed fritzer and zitzser – which looked no different to one you could snaffle for a mere $20K. With a longer warranty, equal build quality, and better reliability. Oh dear. How the mighty had fallen down. Much like the XM suspension too often did.
Ps: I could find no traces of Spaghetti or an Incident, but maybe I am a careless reader, Msr T?
AFAIK, the suspension was probably the most reliable part of the car, but otherwise your point os well taken. And I did see that Daewoo a few times in Bangkok and thought it had an XM feel to it…
PS: this line got by you, perhaps: “the XM has a gut full of half-baked electronic pasta that can be a real headache to sort out.” The spaghetti was the car’s electronic noodle, which was the weakest link in the whole shoddy chain. Hence incident over incident.
Yes, yes, but….but the words didn’t have capitals, now did they?
Alright, I’ll have to eat my words. Pasta-style, I guess.
My understanding – and as I am actually neither informed or learned or even an understanding type, the adjective is a stretch, but it’s still a word – is that the Hydractive fundamentals were as good as a CX (ie: not quite as good as the DS) but the sparky noodley bits now making suggestions to the hydraulics were as prone to making smoke as commonly as the rest of the electrical spaghetti did, meaning that the car too often rode in modes unsuited to its current station. Thus it could act sulkily as if curbside rest was low-crouched high speed and freeway zooming was best done in proto 4wd height.
As to that last, perhaps the heightened hatch of the motorway XM gave some equally high designer an idea and began the trend that so fills the roads today from all manufacturers today?
These (and the 605 and big Renaults) were the cars that destroyed France’s premium car business, and opened the floodgates to the Germans. And they deserved it, for completely losing their way in the key aspects: styling, image, and most of all, build quality. They might as well have just raised a white flag and invited the Germans in.
Back in 1990, I remembered seeing a lone Citroën XM hatch at the NY Auto show. It was surrounded by a bunch of handlers in suits who wouldn’t let you anywhere near the car. Now I know why it never made it stateside.
Not long after Peugeot took over Citroen they wanted the PRV V6 fitted to the CX. Citroen refused saying they had a 2.7 l 4 cylinder engine that was better than the V6. So Peugeot fitted a V6 to a CX themselves so they could test the 2 cars together at the Bechamp proving ground to see who was correct. Inevitably the Citroen 2.7l 4cyl outperformed the Peugeot V6 CX in acceleration, Top Speed and Fuel Consumption,hece why the PRV V6 never appeared in the CX. Should add that Citroen provided a few of these 4cyl cars to the French Motorway Police to the surprise of a few Porsche 911 owners !!!!
About six years ago I was in Cambridge for a few days, walking around a residential neighborhood not far from the train station near where I was staying. i was noticing all the usual small hatchbacks we don’t ever see in the US – Peugeots, Renaults, Skodas and Micras etc. Not many driveways so a lot of cars parked on the street. Amidst all those a perfect looking black XM with a black leather interior appeared. I actually happened to see a couple CX’s (some importer federalized some of them) in the US back in the day but never an XM. I’m pretty sure it had the first series dashboard because I would have noticed the generic non-angular later one that looks like it came from some other car, so a rare survivor. Maybe some engineering prof (or whatever they call them) was keeping it running.
Anyway I thought it looked amazing, not kind of sprawling like the CX (which was also amazing in its day). Not ugly at all.
Yes, there are many normal sights to see in Cambridge that aren’t rare old Citroens. But the BX was up there with the rest, if on a smaller scale than the Easter service at King’s College or the Fitzwilliam museum.
A couple years before that I was at a seminar in Oxford and was again randomly walking around and came across the original Morris Garage, as in MG. There were a couple vintage MG things like a grille in the window. (21 Longwall Street https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/morris-garage). And on the bus going there I spotted a C6, which I didn’t even know existed but I knew what it must be. I would probably have to own one of those if I lived on that side of the Atlantic.
You never know what car related sight might pop up in them furrin countries.
Interesting how the XM here is getting trashed, while my only exposure to them was of course the classic XM vs. Audi S8 chase scene in Ronin (1998) which was covered here on CC.
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/cc-tv/cc-tv-car-chases-on-the-big-screen-audi-s8-mercedes-450sel-vs-citroen-xm-in-ronin/
I was enamored with the S8, but thought “wow, so Citreon actually made something for a performance car.” So if the villain with the MacGuffin is in such a big steaming rolling pile of Citreon, would he have been better off in a 2CV a la Bond, or a DS?
Still one of my favourite big French cars, and I like many of them, except the 605 and 607, though the C6 shades it by actually achieving almost all of what it tried to do.
A fantastic read about a car I was completely unfamiliar with before now. It seems that GM was not the only company guilty of putting underdeveloped cars on the market before all the bugs were sorted out.
I never warmed to the styling of the XM. Too many sharp creases after years of smooth curves. On reading this, perhaps Citroen should have kept the CX going. Surely it was a hard act to follow.
Hard act to follow? Not apart from the inherent risk of a nose-to-tail, as neither CX nor XM was particularly equipped to go far before calling a premature and uncalled-for strike. More hard to sit behind, surely.
I add the not-inconsiderable caveat that I haven’t owned either, but my long-deceased local outer-burb garage fellow was an unrepentant apologist for French rubbish, and regarded the CX as very much an inferior way to lose money compared to the DS. For him, even the hydraulics themselves were of a cheapo standard by comparison, and it must be said, his ever CX-festooned forecourt attested so.
I don’t think he lived to see the XM, but have no doubt that, according to their reputation, he would have lived well if he had.
I adore these because my most cherished toy car as a child was a silver Citroen XM by Matchbox? Hot Wheels? That I managed to lose, which my brother has never let me live down.
I think these are so damn cool but I’m fairly certain buying one of the few surviving ones in Australia is a financial decision on par with burning a pile of money on one’s lawn.
An XM, you say you lost? A mere XM, where it’s reputed even the Matchbox models had accurate rust and immovable wheels?
Why, I had a gold SM – oh yes, the true exotic, no Euro-pudding for me. I didn’t lose it. It was worse.
My V6 Maserati-Citroen lost a door.
Now, the hinges on those Matchboxes were really the size of the door, if scaled up, and not easy to snap, but, in some pre-Ronin car chase excitement on the couch – possibly involving a Zephyr, just coz it looked policey and rolly-polly – I somehow got the door off.
Rather extraordinary how a missing bit on a tiny model could thereafter make it transfer from favourite to bottom-drawer status, yet so it was. An early lesson in consumerism learned well, probably.
As for the real-world XM’s round here, they’re about as cool as the sharpest shoulder pads that were worn in their prime, only with angles and glassy bits added for no discernable purpose.
And as for the dollars liable to go missing in the purchase of one, it is less akin to setting fire to your own hard-earned on your own lawn than it is the liability that arises from igniting your best friend’s savings, on their lawn – and their house and family too.
Interesting – I have run an XM since 2000 (or two of them); the first one (1989 2.0 litre manual Si) had the problem connectors which meant the suspension firmed up randomly. A Citroen mechanic in Essex fixed it for me for free one afternoon. I ran that car up and down Europe in 2000 until 2004 – the only real crisis during that time was a blown fan fuse and one time an LHM pipe leaked. A truck wrecked that car so I went and bought another, a 1990 2.0 SEi. I still have that one. It never had connector faults,the dash doesn´t rattle (it doesn´t rattle) and the only time it left me stranded was due to a corroded connector which cost about three euros to replace (plus 70 euros labour!). I can´t recall any other faults that aren´t general to any older car – perhaps the front stabilisers have jammed twice or three times since 2004. Apart from those niggles the XM has been a reliable car; it certainly isn´t the rattling junkbox that Roger Carr has described. Is it perfect? No? Is it nice? Yes, with super seating and an agile handling character. The XM is a better car than the CX though, I grant you, not as nice. It has more space, rusts a lot less and uses less fuel and has a bigger boot. It looks as good but maybe has a firmer ride. All in all, I´d still choose an XM over a CX.