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I have a neighbour who has a simple evaluation procedure for cars. How big is the boot? And, Do you have to move the driver's seat forward when someone gets in behind?
He loves the Citroen Xsara.
The Citroen is simply cavernous inside for a 4.17 metre medium-size hatch. At 408 litres, the boot is a class up in size, while the leg and head room allow for sprawling space. It's one car that shows the Europeans really do know how to fit four people into a car - together with their luggage.
The Australian 5 door Xsara range starts with the 1.8 litre 16 valve (84kW) four bolted to a five speed. That'll set you back A$28,490, rising to A$29,990 with the 1.8 auto. Unfortunately, the 4HP-Z14 ZF auto trans is tied to the 8 valve, 74kW version of the engine, not the more powerful twin cam. Even with the respectably light mass of 1110kg, each of James Watt's best needs to work hard... Help is at hand, with a 97kW 2 litre 16 valve engine available in an up-spec'ed model for another A$5000 (ouch).
On test here is the slug of the Xsara species - the 1.8 auto. We couldn't find an egg timer to run performance times, but Citroen's claimed quarter mile of 20.0 seconds tells you the story. Or does it? Let's dispatch this area first, because its one of the idiosyncrasies of the car that in almost all conditions it feels more powerful than it really is.
The 1761cc mill develops that 74kW at 6000 rpm and churns out 153Nm at 3000. It is a coarse engine, not particularly smooth and - under the bonnet - not a pretty sight, either. But in there, making the most of every Nm that's being produced, is the ZF auto. A very intelligent 4 speed, the trans down-changes for engine braking (and that means it's always in the right gear when you again plant it), holds onto gears to let the mid-range torque do some of the work, and doesn't hunt unsuccessfully for the right gear. It's been programmed for responsiveness, holding onto third gear - even on small throttle openings - until 70 km/h is reached. That makes town driving a third gear experience - the car doesn't have to change down when you want a little more oomph to keep up with the car in front. In short it feels like a late-Nineties trans hooked onto a mid-Eighties engine.
And of course, the trans can only do so much. When you've got that huge interior filled to the brim, air con running on a hot day, and you've just pulled out on the wrong side of the road to pass a large truck, it's all very troubling...
The 1.8 Xsara comes with electric front windows, power steering, remote central locking, a passenger side electric mirror, driver's airbag, air con, rear drum brakes..... What? Yep, on this near thirty grand car, you'll find drums at the back. While in practice the brakes feel strong and predictable, when the competition has ABS and four wheel discs, lock-the-wheels-yourself and rear shoe polish tins are way off the pace.
And to the driving dynamics. The Xsara is the first car that I've ever driven that makes me feel car sick. It has very long travel suspension (conventional steel springs, not hydraulic) and its damping is more Slumberland than McLaren. As you'd expect, it absorbs the largest of bumps with ease, turning broken bitumen, railway line crossings and the like into just a vague bump-thump. And no, the handling doesn't fall into a heap at the first corner. The roll stiffness is high, the car sitting flat when the lateral g's come into play. The steering is precise and well-weighted, the car able to be placed accurately on the road. In higher speed corners, the Xsara is very competent, able to track securely through bumpy off-camber sweepers. However, in the tight and twisties, understeer dominates.
In fact the contrast in prowess between high and low speed corners was so strong that we wondered about the tyres. The 1.8 Xsara uses Michelin Energy 185/65's being worn on steel 14 x 5.5 rims. These tyres are claimed to provide a very low rolling resistance and so improve economy by up to 5 per cent. But when you inspect the tyres, you can see why. Firstly, the shape of the shoulder means that only about 165mm of the tyre's width bears on the road, and secondly, with a treadwear indication number of 280, the rubber's a long way from being soft. So, hard as buggery tyres which are only about 165mm wide..... no wonder the car feels understeery on tight corners...
The front suspension uses MacPherson struts with a ball-jointed sway bar, while a very compact self-steering torsion bar trailing arm design is used at the rear. In all situations the handling is responsive to the input of the right foot as well as the steering wheel. While the tail doesn't come out, it can be felt to move the rear of the car laterally a little, more like genuine four wheel steer than one with passive rear steering. With good tyres, we would suggest that the handling would be excellent; with the Energy tyres it's okay if you don't get too adventurous...
In addition to being l-a-r-g-e, the cabin of the Citroen has plenty of practical design features. The rear seatbelts clip into fittings that always make them easy to hand and stops them disappearing under the seat when the rear (one-third, two third) seat is folded forward; the rear door child-proof locks raise a red marker when not activated; there's a handle built into the underside of the hatch to allow short people to shut it; the front doors open in three increments - not the normal two; and all head restraints are adjustable for height. None of it ground-breaking stuff - but all useful when you live with a car for years at a time.
The dashboard is well laid out, with minor instruments and controls easy to read. The indicator stalk is on the left-hand side of the column, and along with the other controls, has good tactile feedback. An unfortunate placement is the horn button in the end of the indicator stalk. The low beam of the headlights is height-adjustable via a dashboard control, but the test car suffered from a puzzling fault that reduced the intensity of the high beam the longer that it was on. The auto trans selector allows non-detent changes from Drive to Third, but the selector button needs to be pressed to come back into second gear. The flag showing the position of the gear lever is hard to see at a glance, and on the test car didn't perfectly align with the windows through which it peers.
The Sony cassette AM/FM head unit is tied to four door-mounted speaks and two dash tweeters. Steering wheel mounted buttons talk to the head unit, allowing changes to the volume, station, track, muting and so on. The quality of the overall system is only average; better speakers would improve the sound substantially. The Xsara comes equipped with a poor man's climate control, with temperatures marked on the heater knob and fan speed able to be infinitely variable while also having an 'auto' position. While the air con felt quite strong, the ventilation is poor. To get adequate airflow in only 20 degree C conditions, the fan control needed to be set to at least half.
The plastic fuel tank holds only 54 litres but the car is acceptably frugal. Fuel consumption averaged 8.7 litres/100 km (33 mpg) in a mixture of country and urban kilometres.
The Xsara in 1.8 auto form is an intelligent design trying to escape its down-spec'd configuration. In the soon-to-be-released coupe it'll have a 120kW 2 litre twin cam, 15 inch alloys with decent tyres, rear discs - and we'd expect it to be a ball of fun. But if you're after practical transport - the size of the boot more important than the on-road performance - we think that you'll like the Xsara. From its double galvanised panels to its soft ride, it will be an easy car to live with - albeit at a steep asking price. But with better tyres, four discs and more poke (and not for another A$5,000!), it could be a very good car indeed.
For further info, go to www.citroen.com.au
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