Citroen XM Forum

Paul Hardy who does the featured cars for sale column for Classic and Sportscar magazine was over today looking at my Merc 190 2.5 Cosworth, which he will hopefully feature in the magazine next month (which is when Mercedes Enthusiast are likely to be doing it - probably just as I decide to keep it! ) and as you do, I got chatting to him about XMs.

He wasn't really up to date on the market but looked keen to find out more about what XMs were doing and what ones were selling. I said I'd whack him some info, so if anyone wants to add some here, I'll happily refer him to this thread - he loves them so you never know we might get a good one featured (dreaming I know).

Nice guy.

Its a hard one to decide on Charles.

The Series 2 V6 24v seems to be the one that holds Series 2 values..

As for Series one. That is a sticky one. There seems to be no set value. For the economist its the TD ones that are worth more, but most with Auto Boxs. Manuals much more scarse, though Ive had two through my hands in the last year and a half. They were easy to sell.

Ive not seen a steady interest in a particular engine for selling, as theres a varied number of peoples preference.

Id guess a choice between a 2.1 TD or the V6 12v auto.. but who knows. I bloody dont!

In my opinion the model isn't old enough to see values on a more solid footing. I think even mine needs another five years on its back, never mind the newer ones.

In my view you can wait another ten years and even then the values might never get much above the "floor". For one thing, the XM is just getting outside the range of the collectible car period: too many unfixable and hard to find parts and the fact that people´s tastes have changed. It´s not a sports car and it´s not obviously beautiful like the DS or CX or a 70s Jaguar. Unlovely barges such as the 1976-1986 Mercedes W123 and E12 have a degree of attractiveness due to their simplicity, longevity and the glow of the brands´current success. Wherease blokes reaching 30-40 years of age in the 80s hankered after the cars of their childhood, I don´t think kids who saw the XM or any of its peers think the same. There is a qualitative difference between cars of the classic period and the "young-timer" period: people like the way the older cars were made as it is more intuitively charming much as people intrinsically tend to like classical architecture but only "respect" most modern buildings (with exceptions). The XM is probably going to enter the netherworld of the Tagora, Lancia Gamma and Peugeot 604: there will always be a few and one or two high price minters will always find a buyer but all the ordinary ones will tick along at the equivalent cost of a month´s wages for the average guy (or indeed, girl).

Perhaps it'll just have to occupy a niche for the 'discerning' and afficionados of technical excellence, along with Bristols, the Rover P5B and P6B, and a good few others. Always nice, when friends, family and old work colleagues are whisked about in ours, and are amazed at the space, comfort and performance. "What did you say this was?" and "How old?" are common reactions.

The spares supply side, for the relatively small number likely to survive, is worrying. John has written on this extensively before. Unlike many MG and Jaguar owners, XM owners do not have bottomless pockets, and will neither pay sizeable sums for a secondhand XM, nor be prepared to pay out for expensive repairs or parts re-manufacture. Many will have bought their car as a cheap but immensely capable vehicle.

Having been through all this with Rover P6 some 30 years ago, it's interesting to draw comparisons - the appeal of the cars is not dissimilar. At its peak, the P6 Rover Owners Club boasted some 4500 members worldwide IIRC. Today, despite being, I believe, about a quarter of that, essential parts continue to be remanufactured and sourced (sometimes superior to the OE items), and at prices ordinary folk can afford. Rover owners, like us, don't readily write large cheques. That's one of the reasons they bought their car in the first place.

Isn´t the critical difference between the P6 and the XM that the P6 is a much simpler machine. It´s all mechanical or the most basic of electrical systems. The XM is made of more complex components and more complex materials. Some parts of it are just beyond re-manufacture because the pool of expertise is too huge to re-start the process. For a P6 the expertise required to fabricate things is less.

I have a way of thinking about the complexity of things. It is to ask how many people (or I suppose different forms of expertise) are needed to make a thing. Start with a pencil: you need all the skills of the mining industry to get the graphite, you need foresters, wood cutters, drivers, paint manufacturers and someone who can operate a pencil-making machine, plus the people who know how to build a pencil making machine. This isn´t exhaustive. Then we move to a P6. Luckily a lot of the expertise required to make bits of a P6 are shared with lots and lots of other cars (and other machines) so even though the pool of expertise is much bigger than for the pencil, it´s quite stable. The extra bits that add to the XM´s complexity require much bigger pools of expertise: all those electronic parts and, I suppose, some of the hydraulic bits and the new plastics moulded into odd shapes. If the P6 needs 5,000 people to make, then the XM needs 100,00 people to make from the ground up. My figures could be off by two orders of magnitude. A P6 might need 50,000 to make. Does anyone know how many people are required to make a new die for pressing? I don´t. I suppose it must be a fair few: die cutter, engineer, tool operator. I´ve never looked into this before.

I had a look for information on making dies for pressing. This was a real eye-opener.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGGZvwIUWLg

Another method involves milling a block of steel to the required form and then polishing it to the exact shape.

And take a look at this, a silent film showing the press technology of Dunkes. Note the huge size of the presses. This is "just" to form sheet steel. I knew this in principle but had never seen an actual press before. It´s quite spectacular.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2FRH6Jo8JQ

You're right, of course, the order of complexity (and component count) of the XM is far greater than the Rover, and the XM isn't sharing many of its components with makes beyond PSA. My first car (a 1935 Rover 10) could be maintained with a handful open-ended spanners, a lump hammer and the occasional multimeter, and when its back leaf-springs broke, a Manchester blacksmith made a pair from scratch. Things have moved on.

So, it's even more important that XM expert knowledge is fostered and organised and archived. Already, many Citroen "professionals" have already forgotten large chunks of what they ever knew about the car and its engineering. To keep our cars on the road, there will be an increasing need for "work-arounds", and knowledge of cross-compatibility will be crucial. We're already seeing this with helpful links to BX, Xantia, C5, C6 and beyond.

I'm pretty good at keeping old cars on the road (have had a fair bit of practice), and don't baulk at even complex repairs, but I'll be the first to say that I'd now be really struggling without our Club (and its sisters), and the amazing body of knowledge we all have at our disposal. It's one hell of a resource.

Give it a few years and we'll be able to print the parts. They can already do guns and stuff.