Friday 30th January 2015

Shed Of The Week: Citroen Saxo VTS

A standard (well, very nearly) Saxo VTS for £1K? Must be worth a look!

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Consider yourself very fortunate that you understand English and don't have to learn it. Otherwise you'd be scratching your head at some of the odd phrases we use.

Not the Shed...

Here's one: 'barrel of laughs'. Clearly, you can't contain laughs in a barrel, but we all know what it means. It means you're having a riot. No, not that sort of riot, the other kind.

Anyway, if there's a barrel of laughs, it must surely be possible to have a sack of frowns. Forty years of matrimonial misery mean that Shed's happy barrel is slightly smaller than the one you'd find dangling from the chin of a St Bernard rescue dog in the Alps. His sack of sadness, however, is the size of Santa's.

What's all this got to do with the Citroen Saxo VTS? Well, few cars offer such high potential for barrel and sack extremes of pleasure and pain. Along with the Peugeot 106 GTI, this was one of the last great French hot superminis. With a springy 120hp motor in a light footed 935kg chassis, the range-topping twin-cam VTS topped 125mph and nailed 60mph in a low eight, maybe even a high seven. Compared to its softer brother, the VTR, it had a bigger master brake cylinder, ABS as standard and a thicker rear anti-roll bar.

If Citroen was making something like the VTS now, in 2015, you suspect it would be a raging success. Sadly, the Saxo was replaced by the distinctly average C2. The modern-day requirement of being able to smash into something at speed and step out with nary a scratch has more or less killed off what was a highly enjoyable genre. Shame we don't have the choice of signing a safety opt-out disclaimer in exchange for some good old-fashioned flimsiness. The odds are in your favour, too: honestly, how often have you been hit in the side by a massive steel block powered by hydraulic rams?

... also not the Shed. Facelift at least

106 GTIs tend to be favoured over Saxos as they have a somewhat nicer interior, what with the half-Alcantara seating and everything, and they also tend to be better looked after. But they're as thin on the ground as untrammelled Saxos.

Fortunately there are still some good Cits about. This looks like it might be one. It's from 2003, the last year of Saxo production. It's low mileage, it's only had three owners and it looks pukka from what we can see in the solitary pic the owner has deigned to take. We've put some generic ones in to remind you what the rest of it should or could look like, and of course to fill space.

With the mileage and ownership history, you'd like to think it's going to be OK, but let's have a quick rummage through the sack of doom and talk about some of the reasons why you might not want to take a chance on something that was brilliant when new but that is now 12 years old, and French.

The overall story with these cars is that yes, things break - it's in the nature of a beast that was designed to be driven hard - but your costs will never be wallet-meltingly high. Everything is fixable.

Hopefully it's got one of these

Let's start under the bonnet, and from the top. Head gaskets are known to fail. The seller of our Shed doesn't mention anything about the service history, or about the belts and pulleys. The official change schedule is 70-80K; call it 75K. It's a cheap job, so no big worries there even if it hasn't been done yet.

Idling is typically a bit rough, but they all do that sir. Not starting can be an issue, as can electrical niggles like the alarm kicking off of its own volition, the ABS light coming on etc, but these are often sensor-related and cheaply mended. Radiators get crumbly, but that happens to any old car.

Moving down, transmissions are predictably a victim of hard usage. Crunchy gearchanges might just be the clutch, which will become even more marginal if you're coaxing more power out of the engine - a tempting thing to do given that a decent induction kit, stainless manifold and decat exhaust will instantly put you on 140hp plus. But grinding gears might also be a problem with the gearbox itself, if it's been ragged to oblivion by fast and/or furious wannabes. Again, this needn't be a dealbreaker. Replacements are cheap, available, and easily fitted.

Driveshafts are vulnerable on lowered cars, but this one isn't lowered. You will need to lower yourself though for a close look under the back end. The rear axle/beam assembly is famously fragile on Saxos, putting one or more of your wheels at a jaunty angle, but once again the aftermarket is your friend: you can pick up a recon unit for £200 delivered. While you're down there in the muck have a look for corrosion in the boot area and inner arches.

Ah yes, the Saxo's glory days

Even when everything's running according to the factory's wishes a Saxo will generally have more rattles and creaks than a 1930s rollercoaster, both inside (often from the seats) and out (often the exhaust). Replacing the spring clamps might sort out your pipe squeaks. A ten foot extension bar might help you remove sticky alloys and a tube of bathroom sealant might help a leaky sunroof, but Shed accepts no responsibility if any of these suggestions fail or go terribly wrong.

There's a comment in the ad where the vendor seems to be apologizing for what most of us would consider a desirable feature, i.e. the stainless exhaust. It sounds a bit like selling your Elise and apologizing for the supercharger. Of course, what we think he's telling you in his own way is that a standard exhaust is all you'll need to restore the car to factory spec - which bodes well for the generally unbarried state of the whole car. Get it while it lasts.

Here is the ad.

79198 miles
Currently taxed, however as soon as the log book is received by the DVLA the tax will be refunded.
2 keys
MOT until 16th July 2015
I am the 3rd owner of the car.
i have owned the car for the past year and have had the following items replaced: 2 new tyres, new battery & a service.
The car is completely standard apart from a stainless steel exhaust which was on the car when i purchased it. I have looked around and you can get a standard one to replace the stainless steel one for around £40.00. you could probably sell the stainless steel one for £100+ its a very good quality one.
I am not looking to give the car away. it has never let me down the whole time i have owned it so if you re looking for a cheap reliable run around or a first car this could be exactly what you're looking for.

 

[Krikkit]

Cracking shed, these are a ridiculously fun car to throw about. Don't be put off by minor mechanical niggles either, they are an absolute doddle to work on (for the most part). A cambelt change is an easy 2h job with plenty of cups of tea.

[Krikkit]

paulmaurice99 said:

Mine (a relatively humble VTR - though the difference between the VTR and the VTS was very similar to the difference between 8v and 16v Golf, ie. not very much unless you had the space to push past 5k rpm in every gear)

Not quite - the softer ARB's spoilt the snappyness of the handling, and the VTR's 8v engine was choked of its buzzyness by a ridiculously long set of gear ratios in the VTR box.

[Krikkit]

paulmaurice99 said:

Krikkit said:

paulmaurice99 said:

Mine (a relatively humble VTR - though the difference between the VTR and the VTS was very similar to the difference between 8v and 16v Golf, ie. not very much unless you had the space to push past 5k rpm in every gear)

Not quite - the softer ARB's spoilt the snappyness of the handling, and the VTR's 8v engine was choked of its buzzyness by a ridiculously long set of gear ratios in the VTR box.

Interestingly I never knew about the ARBs until today - can't say I noticed any deficiencies, but then I never drove a VTS extensively to compare the two. God, maybe I'd have ended up pushing a VTS even harder and taking even more liberties...

And I'd forgotten the longer ratios - on the flipside that made it a really long-legged (relatively) motorway car, which is not something you'd expect of a car like that. That's something I do remember what with it being my only car. The E36 328 auto that replaced it seemed to have intergalactic gearing after that...

They were a bit snappy, but not as bad as the 205 as long as the rear beam bushes were in good condition.

VTR definitely had an advantage on the motorway, try an 106 S1 Rallye some time with its ridiculously short gearing! 70 is nearly 4k RPM. The VTR had both different gear ratios and a different final drive, both of which made the revs more like a normal car.