La vie est belle - Citroën C5 Exclusive Tourer
Discussion
Having moved to France last year in the mighty-but-s
tey Ford Focus 1.6 diesel hatchback we've been running around in it, discovering its faults, and trying to decide whether to keep it or sell it. On the plus side, it's handily sized, handles quite well on the twisty roads, and it runs. On the minus side, well, everything else. It's slow, its uncomfortable, it's noisy, it vibrates as you drive it, its drops off in its limited power every time the EGR decides to do its thing, and yesterday we discovered it chugs out an alarming amount of smoke when the throttle is open. It's also cosmetically challenged.
Whether we replace it or run it into the ground we basically decided that we needed a nice big comfortable refined load carrier. In Britain I would be straight onto the classifieds looking for an E class Mercedes, but in France they are very rare, hugely expensive even for ropey examples, and I know from experience with my W124, absolute money pits. What else then? I don't like Audis at all, nor Volvos, BMWs, big Renaults, or big Peugeots (except for the new 508 and 5008, both of which are miles outside my budget)
So, thanks to S100HP's thread, my heart settled on l'arrière-petite-fille d'une déesse - the Citroën C5 Tourer, while my head made a lot of effort to make it into a rational decision. I am in the land of the double chevron, where it is illegal to trade as a mechanic unless you are fully trained in all Citroën's hydraulic systems, and where the spare parts are to be found. It'll be absolutely fine.
I knew I wanted an Exclusive because you get the final version of Citroën's famous hydropneumatic suspension: Hydractive 3+. In this last iteration everything is computer controlled and, if I may descend into some technical detail for a moment, it does magical things to make everything all lovely. Plus there is a button in the boot to make it go up and down for loading and unloading stuff. And switches inside the car to do the same. Very handy for visiting my wife's parents who have a house at the end of a long bumpy rocky driveway. Living in a hot place I didn't want full leather but I did want memory seats, and I thought it would be nice to have one of the nicer versions of the various stereos on offer when new. The other major factor was I wanted some performance. You could get these with a 1.6 but if its the same engine that's in my Focus then it's simply not powerful enough, or reliable enough. Forget petrol engines, and the 3 V6 models litre are like hen's teeth, but 2.0s and 2.2s are fairly common, powerful, economical, and command a premium.
I set up a search on Leboncoin and after a few suspect looking cars came and went, and some really nice ones slipped through my fingers I found a 2012 Exclusive Tourer with half leather electric memory seats, the 2.0HDi 160bhp Euro5 engine, the best stereo you could get in 2012, and best of all, it was the 6 speed automatic box. It had done 120,500 km (about 75,000 miles), was from one of the southern departments, and looked clean, so I drove 100km north to see it. It was a good, honest car, in good condition, with no rust, just some dodgy stickers and a small dent and some scratches in the rear bumper. The engine bay looked great, hadn't been cleaned, and no traces of any leaks. The alloys are spotless. It had two previous owners and a stack of paperwork indicating that all the services had been done at main dealers, and nothing had ever gone wrong with it, bar a replacement battery in 2018, and for some reason the stereo boots up with a Peugeot logo, and paired with my phone as 'Peugeot' so it must be a replacement unit from a Peugeot, though there is no documentation to explain why. A test drive showed that it steered well, rode nicely, everything worked, and the interior was in great condition. It even had a detachable towbar, So with no reason not to, we bought it.
Yesterday morning we picked it up, and drove it 400km south to my in-laws' house, co-incidentally in the same department as the car had been registered in, and just 14km from the first owner. After the Focus this thing was a revelation. It is super quiet, amazingly comfortable and soft on the suspension, and yet it goes round corners with absolutely zero body roll - it is completely flat - maybe it even leans in; hard to tell. Citroën have worked some fiendishly clever magic here. The 2 litre engine has 160bhp and 250 lb-ft of torque, so once again we can overtake things safely. The aircon is seriously effective, and it extends to the glovebox to keep your snacks cool. This car absolutely obliterates the distance. This same journey in the Ford leaves us knackered at the end. Not so here. So far I think it's absolutely bloody marvellous.
What don't I like about it?
It's not a big list.
tey Ford Focus 1.6 diesel hatchback we've been running around in it, discovering its faults, and trying to decide whether to keep it or sell it. On the plus side, it's handily sized, handles quite well on the twisty roads, and it runs. On the minus side, well, everything else. It's slow, its uncomfortable, it's noisy, it vibrates as you drive it, its drops off in its limited power every time the EGR decides to do its thing, and yesterday we discovered it chugs out an alarming amount of smoke when the throttle is open. It's also cosmetically challenged.Whether we replace it or run it into the ground we basically decided that we needed a nice big comfortable refined load carrier. In Britain I would be straight onto the classifieds looking for an E class Mercedes, but in France they are very rare, hugely expensive even for ropey examples, and I know from experience with my W124, absolute money pits. What else then? I don't like Audis at all, nor Volvos, BMWs, big Renaults, or big Peugeots (except for the new 508 and 5008, both of which are miles outside my budget)
So, thanks to S100HP's thread, my heart settled on l'arrière-petite-fille d'une déesse - the Citroën C5 Tourer, while my head made a lot of effort to make it into a rational decision. I am in the land of the double chevron, where it is illegal to trade as a mechanic unless you are fully trained in all Citroën's hydraulic systems, and where the spare parts are to be found. It'll be absolutely fine.
I knew I wanted an Exclusive because you get the final version of Citroën's famous hydropneumatic suspension: Hydractive 3+. In this last iteration everything is computer controlled and, if I may descend into some technical detail for a moment, it does magical things to make everything all lovely. Plus there is a button in the boot to make it go up and down for loading and unloading stuff. And switches inside the car to do the same. Very handy for visiting my wife's parents who have a house at the end of a long bumpy rocky driveway. Living in a hot place I didn't want full leather but I did want memory seats, and I thought it would be nice to have one of the nicer versions of the various stereos on offer when new. The other major factor was I wanted some performance. You could get these with a 1.6 but if its the same engine that's in my Focus then it's simply not powerful enough, or reliable enough. Forget petrol engines, and the 3 V6 models litre are like hen's teeth, but 2.0s and 2.2s are fairly common, powerful, economical, and command a premium.
I set up a search on Leboncoin and after a few suspect looking cars came and went, and some really nice ones slipped through my fingers I found a 2012 Exclusive Tourer with half leather electric memory seats, the 2.0HDi 160bhp Euro5 engine, the best stereo you could get in 2012, and best of all, it was the 6 speed automatic box. It had done 120,500 km (about 75,000 miles), was from one of the southern departments, and looked clean, so I drove 100km north to see it. It was a good, honest car, in good condition, with no rust, just some dodgy stickers and a small dent and some scratches in the rear bumper. The engine bay looked great, hadn't been cleaned, and no traces of any leaks. The alloys are spotless. It had two previous owners and a stack of paperwork indicating that all the services had been done at main dealers, and nothing had ever gone wrong with it, bar a replacement battery in 2018, and for some reason the stereo boots up with a Peugeot logo, and paired with my phone as 'Peugeot' so it must be a replacement unit from a Peugeot, though there is no documentation to explain why. A test drive showed that it steered well, rode nicely, everything worked, and the interior was in great condition. It even had a detachable towbar, So with no reason not to, we bought it.
Yesterday morning we picked it up, and drove it 400km south to my in-laws' house, co-incidentally in the same department as the car had been registered in, and just 14km from the first owner. After the Focus this thing was a revelation. It is super quiet, amazingly comfortable and soft on the suspension, and yet it goes round corners with absolutely zero body roll - it is completely flat - maybe it even leans in; hard to tell. Citroën have worked some fiendishly clever magic here. The 2 litre engine has 160bhp and 250 lb-ft of torque, so once again we can overtake things safely. The aircon is seriously effective, and it extends to the glovebox to keep your snacks cool. This car absolutely obliterates the distance. This same journey in the Ford leaves us knackered at the end. Not so here. So far I think it's absolutely bloody marvellous.
What don't I like about it?
It's not a big list.
- It doesn't play with my iPod through the USB socket, so I'll need to get a lead for the aux-in in the glovebox
- There is no way to get CarPlay in it - and bluetooth only works for phone calls, not music streaming, so some kind of dongle needed there.
- The two front tyres are Chinese - GT Radial Champiro FE1, though the back ones are Bridgestone Turanza T005, all with good tread.
- One of the covers marked 'Top tether' is missing from the headlining. I don't even know what that is but the picture looks like some Isofix thing to do with a child seat. No children will ever be allowed in my car, so it's not that important.
- There were crap stickers on the back: one from the Control Technique garage and one advertising the previous owner's Breton origins - A hairdryer and some petrol on a bit of kitchen paper
- The dent in the rear bumper. I may do something about this with a heat gun and some cold air spray, or I may just leave it. There is nearby scraping to the lower black plastic valence, which can be safely ignored. The previous owner clearly reversed over / into something.
- It's going to need a bit of T-Cut. The old owner must have been a ring wearer, because there's loads of light scratches in the door handle recesses.
Nice write up.
When I was commuting I was seriously tempted by a C5 with hydro-3 suspension, glad to know you can still hustle it.
Yet to try out the new suspension system from Citroen but like their focus on ride and comfort again.
The C5 profile in estate form looks great and the interior is really nice too.
Is there any resistance to pre euro6 diesels in France or hard to do anything outside Paris due to being so popular previously.
Happy gliding.
When I was commuting I was seriously tempted by a C5 with hydro-3 suspension, glad to know you can still hustle it.
Yet to try out the new suspension system from Citroen but like their focus on ride and comfort again.
The C5 profile in estate form looks great and the interior is really nice too.
Is there any resistance to pre euro6 diesels in France or hard to do anything outside Paris due to being so popular previously.
Happy gliding.
It's probably about time I wrote an update on this motor car.
The C5 continues to be the perfect car for long distances, the perfect car for the tip run, or bringing back loads of stuff from the shops. It's our go-to car for the 400km journey to our in-laws. I have a thing to plug the iPhone into now, and the boot has a 12v socket so we can take a cool-box. The torque makes it an easy car to accumulate speed in.
I went to buy some wood pellets yesterday for our new central heating system, and came back with over 150kg in the boot. The ride was as comfortable as ever, the suspension level as if it was empty, and it was still a joy to drive the country roads back to my house in.
It's been super-versatile. We drove it back to London and filled it to the brim with our belongings, and had a comfortable trouble-free journey back to Charente. We bought a boat and drove for an hour with it on the roof. You could play tunes with the ratchet straps by driving at different speeds, but it was fine. We've had a bookcase on the roof, another in the boot. It swallowed a big garden table and 8 chairs without trouble. It's an immensely fine load carrier. It's also a great car to pick up friends from the station an hour away. It swallows all their luggage and whooshes them in great comfort to the house.
It's also frugal, even with me driving. The computer reckons about 1200km to a tank and I have no reason to doubt it.
There have been two problems. The first was on the way to England when the cruise control announced it was no longer going to play. At 130kmh on the Autoroute. No indication of any problems, and I just set the speed limiter instead. (I *love* speed limiters. Usually set to 53 and I can accelerate briskly in towns without fear of going over the limit). It fixed itself when we next started the car and never failed again. Then recently it went into limp home mode (refusing to rev past 2500 RPM) with a message about an engine fault. I plugged my Lexia in and got a code indicating over boosting had occurred, and off it went to our excellent local Citroën garage who diagnosed a wastegate valve and charged me a little over three hundred euros. Not bad at all for a 10 year old car.
The stereo still says "Peugeot" though!
The C5 continues to be the perfect car for long distances, the perfect car for the tip run, or bringing back loads of stuff from the shops. It's our go-to car for the 400km journey to our in-laws. I have a thing to plug the iPhone into now, and the boot has a 12v socket so we can take a cool-box. The torque makes it an easy car to accumulate speed in.
I went to buy some wood pellets yesterday for our new central heating system, and came back with over 150kg in the boot. The ride was as comfortable as ever, the suspension level as if it was empty, and it was still a joy to drive the country roads back to my house in.
It's been super-versatile. We drove it back to London and filled it to the brim with our belongings, and had a comfortable trouble-free journey back to Charente. We bought a boat and drove for an hour with it on the roof. You could play tunes with the ratchet straps by driving at different speeds, but it was fine. We've had a bookcase on the roof, another in the boot. It swallowed a big garden table and 8 chairs without trouble. It's an immensely fine load carrier. It's also a great car to pick up friends from the station an hour away. It swallows all their luggage and whooshes them in great comfort to the house.
It's also frugal, even with me driving. The computer reckons about 1200km to a tank and I have no reason to doubt it.
There have been two problems. The first was on the way to England when the cruise control announced it was no longer going to play. At 130kmh on the Autoroute. No indication of any problems, and I just set the speed limiter instead. (I *love* speed limiters. Usually set to 53 and I can accelerate briskly in towns without fear of going over the limit). It fixed itself when we next started the car and never failed again. Then recently it went into limp home mode (refusing to rev past 2500 RPM) with a message about an engine fault. I plugged my Lexia in and got a code indicating over boosting had occurred, and off it went to our excellent local Citroën garage who diagnosed a wastegate valve and charged me a little over three hundred euros. Not bad at all for a 10 year old car.
The stereo still says "Peugeot" though!
Great write up! Ive always liked these and see them as great value. I often think it might be the way to go if I ever replace my V70. Only thing that puts me off is the diesel engine but economy would be good compared to the Volvo. Have you had any anti pollution faults? Or steering rack issues?
It's given me (and the previous owners) no trouble at all apart from that wastegate valve.
No emissions warmings. I do tend to drive it 'assertively' and give it a good thrashing whenever the road allows, which must keep the DPF happy.
No trouble with the steering (yet) either.
I wonder if the steering issues are just on RHD cars, or corrosion. We never see salt on the roads here and you regularly see cars from the 80s and 90s being daily-driven.
No emissions warmings. I do tend to drive it 'assertively' and give it a good thrashing whenever the road allows, which must keep the DPF happy.
No trouble with the steering (yet) either.
I wonder if the steering issues are just on RHD cars, or corrosion. We never see salt on the roads here and you regularly see cars from the 80s and 90s being daily-driven.
It's been ages since I wrote any updates about this Citroën, but that's because there has been nothing to write about. It received a service, a new CT, a new cover for that 'Top Tether' isofix thing, and a set of nice tailored mats because the dealers are clearing their old stock and they were cheap.
The CT was slightly dicey as the middle brake light had decided not to work, but the man said "I'll put it down as intermittent, and give it a pass." At the service the dealer found some broken wiring to the tailgate and repaired it. Apparently it's a very common problem.
This fine machine has taken everything we can throw at it, whether that is delivering tons of rubble to the tip, bringing back a small boat on its roof from Dordogne, or towing a trailer full of furniture, all while delivering excellent fuel economy and until recently, lots of comfort. I say "until recently" because of late we've noticed the ride getting worse, first of all to the level of a normal car, and currently bone-jarringly harsh. The rear spheres have given up the ghost, and I've asked the garage to replace the whole lot, as the fronts won't be far behind. Sadly Citroën are taking an age to come up with some stock, but it's next on the list and we have 3 other cars to use in the meantime, having acquired my father-in-law's fairly new Citroën C4 Cactus.
The CT was slightly dicey as the middle brake light had decided not to work, but the man said "I'll put it down as intermittent, and give it a pass." At the service the dealer found some broken wiring to the tailgate and repaired it. Apparently it's a very common problem.
This fine machine has taken everything we can throw at it, whether that is delivering tons of rubble to the tip, bringing back a small boat on its roof from Dordogne, or towing a trailer full of furniture, all while delivering excellent fuel economy and until recently, lots of comfort. I say "until recently" because of late we've noticed the ride getting worse, first of all to the level of a normal car, and currently bone-jarringly harsh. The rear spheres have given up the ghost, and I've asked the garage to replace the whole lot, as the fronts won't be far behind. Sadly Citroën are taking an age to come up with some stock, but it's next on the list and we have 3 other cars to use in the meantime, having acquired my father-in-law's fairly new Citroën C4 Cactus.
The Cactus is a 2019, so the face lifted model. The trick hydraulic dampers are a bit of magic really. The ride is incredibly plush. That’s great for my FIL’s driveway which resembles the surface of the moon. Handling is better than it has any right to be but it is no sports car.
It’s not the kind of car we need so we’ll be selling it soon, but we have been impressed by its design and it’s ability.
It’s not the kind of car we need so we’ll be selling it soon, but we have been impressed by its design and it’s ability.
We finally got sick of waiting for Citroën to supply new spheres so we went with the pattern parts, apparently only good for a couple of years, but it makes the car driveable again.
Oh my goodness it's like riding on a cloud. I had forgotten just how lovely working hydractive suspension was. There's a cobbled bit of street in our nearby town and it just glides over it, with a composure that the otherwise-impressive C4 Cactus simply lacks.
We're taking it down to the FIL's tomorrow and to the UK at the weekend,
I expect we have to give Khan his ULEZ money, but I do wonder if TfL can actually trace us if I didn't bother.
Oh my goodness it's like riding on a cloud. I had forgotten just how lovely working hydractive suspension was. There's a cobbled bit of street in our nearby town and it just glides over it, with a composure that the otherwise-impressive C4 Cactus simply lacks.
We're taking it down to the FIL's tomorrow and to the UK at the weekend,
I expect we have to give Khan his ULEZ money, but I do wonder if TfL can actually trace us if I didn't bother.
We're back in France, after 7 weeks in London, waiting and watching.
Autopay Ulez account was set up and the registration entered. So far nothing has been taken.
I have a suspicion that the particular numbers on our car can be mistaken for a British registration by the computer.
We took it to a car park in Chichester and the ticket printed by the machine read "C873 IRL" rather than "CB 731 RL".
If this is indeed the case I could have been driving it around loads more instead of parking in the garage and getting trains and buses.
Autopay Ulez account was set up and the registration entered. So far nothing has been taken.
I have a suspicion that the particular numbers on our car can be mistaken for a British registration by the computer.
We took it to a car park in Chichester and the ticket printed by the machine read "C873 IRL" rather than "CB 731 RL".
If this is indeed the case I could have been driving it around loads more instead of parking in the garage and getting trains and buses.
Since I bought the car the stereo has announced itself as a Peugeot whenever I start the engine. The bluetooth ID is also "PEUGEOT".
I didn't have a fix for this until recently when I read in some French forums about the unit being buggy, and if you plugged a Lexia in you could interrogate the stereo to find the first character of the VIN had changed from a V to a question mark. Editing it back to a V would restore the Citroën startup screen and bluetooth name. The theory would be that the default is Peugeot and if the VIN is corrupted it doesn't know to display anything else.
I own a Lexia interface and a dodgy copy of Diagbox on a virtual machine, so I plugged it in and saw that I indeed had this problem. One edit later and my car's identity crisis has been eliminated!
I didn't have a fix for this until recently when I read in some French forums about the unit being buggy, and if you plugged a Lexia in you could interrogate the stereo to find the first character of the VIN had changed from a V to a question mark. Editing it back to a V would restore the Citroën startup screen and bluetooth name. The theory would be that the default is Peugeot and if the VIN is corrupted it doesn't know to display anything else.
I own a Lexia interface and a dodgy copy of Diagbox on a virtual machine, so I plugged it in and saw that I indeed had this problem. One edit later and my car's identity crisis has been eliminated!
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