1989 Citroen AX 11tre review from UK and Ireland

One gear linkage bushing came loose, that's it. Time to fix - ten minutes. Part sourced from breakers yard, cost £7.80.

This was a very early model AX and conformed to the original design ethos of the car - it was very lightweight, aerodynamic (for its class and it's day) easy to drive in the city and frugal like few other petrol cars. I regularly got 65mpg out of it.

I bought this car with 45,000 miles on the clock for £750.00 aged 12 years, and it was just begining to show the first signs of rust. There was minor perforation on the inside front wheel arches and a couple of spots on the body where paint chips had lead to small freckles. These I treated and sprayed. The underside was slightly worse as it hadn't had any TLC for a long time and was begining to show paint loss and rust was just begining. Another ten thousand miles and the chasis would have begun to rot. I ground the rusty areas, repainted properly then top-coated with EM antichip and topped with waxoyl on underside, inside arches and inside every beam/member i could get the hose in.

This was a weekend's work, resulting in a 12 year old car that looked like new and was good for another 60,000 of motoring.

The later models of this car moved away slightly from the lightweight idealism of the design and added more soundproofing. I decided that this would be a good idea, as there was a little boom from all the undampened panels in the cabin. £30 worth of deadening panels (self-adhesive bitumen sheet) on footwells, boot walls and door outer skins and the inside noise halved.

The ride of the car was very french - leaning into corners with gay abandon...

...but on the other hand for a 45bhp engine the car was relatively nippy. remember this weighed in at 700kg.

Also this car had black bumpers and the rear bumper was a two peice. The window surrounds and pillars were matt black (the car's colour was charcoal metallic grey) and these looked very nice together. Later models cut costs by using one colour throughout which looked far less appealing.

Then a month after all this work had been done and the car was running beautifully... someone thoughtfully shortened it by a foot at both ends for me. Ah well. And was he insured? Was he heck.

My advise for first time buyers who're not worried about (or enjoy) getting their hands dirty and want a cheap runner that'll do 350 miles on £20 of petrol, find one in this good condition and you'll do well. Just avoid the other idiots on the road.