Citroen Saxo X 1.1i Review

Overall Rating

Good nippy little car
Nice interior
Pretty good handling

Had niggling little problems (read the review)
And issues with reliability
3 stud wheels
Panel rattle (read the review for why)

Well this is my first car and when i got it i was quite happy with it.

Its a 1997 Citroen Saxo 1.1i X - I paid £950 for it with 81000 miles on the clock and some service history. The wheel bearings and gear box had been changed, rear wheel buckets/ hubs replaced, front wheel discs replaced and the rear lighting clusters had also all been replaced - so a fair bit of work had been done on it.

It uses the PSA TU1M 1124CC engine and at just a shade over 60BHP, it's a very nippy little car, faster than my sisters 1.2 corsa off the mark.

The interior is pretty nice, a bit too much plastic in some places for my liking.

I did have an issue with fuel consumption but I was doing rather short journeys of 6 miles and was drinking fuel quite a lot (around about 20mpg). I replaced the oil filter with a champion one and the oil with fully synthetic 0w-30 castrol GTX, the spark plugs with Bosch quad cores and changed the air filter - it drinks less fuel now. Replacing the oil with Castrol's fully synthetic stuff is one of the best things you can do and means you wont have to change it as often as standard mineral or part synthetic oil.

The battery died completely so I replaced that, the alternator was being funny but turned out to be the brushes sticking so I cleaned them out with electrical contact cleaner and it works fine now, my alternator belt had also snapped so I replaced that. I've spent around about £60 on the little niggling things, didn't cost too much, but worse ws to come.

As of now though, it's unfortunately off the road as my inlet manifold cooling pipe has completely sheared off in such a way that I have to replace the whole manifold - I'm getting it from a breakers so no biggy there.

I love my audio so I kind of had a problem with all the standard stuff, replaced the tape player with a Pioneer DEH-2800MP (read my review) the front speakers with some 2 way kenwood KFC 1369s and have put an infinity 1240r reference series sub in the back along with a vibe black box 1 amplifier and now I'm very happy with it. The only problem now is the panel rattle, as with all French cars there's lots of plastic banging and rattling against the metal surfaces of the car but I've sorted that now with non fibreglass loft insulation and there's next to nothing in panel rattle anymore.

The handling isn't too bad, although with the standard 13s it doesn't like tight corners.

A big problem to me is the fact it's a 3 stud version, meaning I'm very restricted when choosing alloys.

All in all I'm not too disappointed with the car as you'll get these things when buying 2nd hand cars - either that or I'm ridden with bad luck!

ATB

tom

Members' Comments onBomBom101's Review

• BomBom101 on 28th Jan 2007

  I have had the manifold replaced now, and all is well. But now the rocker cover gasket has split, so I'm going to replace that next :)
  
  ATB
  
  tom