Faults:

Roof leaks. One roof replaced within warranty.

Second roof required £3000 work on it.

AC not working.

General Comments:

I loved the car. It was fun whilst it worked, but then the roof leaked. Then the roof & boot wouldn't open.

This was the second roof.

Faults:

There was a leak in the roof, which had to be fixed.

The moulding concealing the roof workings had to be re-secured and clips ordered.

The sun visor on the driver's side was almost unmovable when new, and then went to completely 'limp', so that had to be renewed.

The electric windows don't always respond, and once I left the window open all night, as one of the back windows had gone up, but not the other, and I didn't realise until the next morning.

The worse thing is that the dash board went off completely when I was driving on a dual carriageway with my daughter. We were going at 60 mph, having just overtaken a Landrover pulling a horse box, and then suddenly nothing! We slowed down, I hit the hazards (but I can't be sure if they registered with the electrics' failure) and it was very frightening. The steering went completely rigid as well.

It's been back in the garage yet again, and they've replaced the fuse box, but it's made me nervous to drive it, and I only picked it back up yesterday.

General Comments:

I owned a Citroen C3 Pluriel before I bought my new car, and I absolutely loved it.

There were no problems with my old car at all, and I had bought it from the rep. at the garage, so it had minimum mileage on it, but couldn't be classed as a 'new' car.

It drove like a dream for years, and then one day, after a really long drive, I reversed it onto my drive at home and the gear stick went completely 'limp' and wouldn't engage. We decided to sell it at this point and trade it in for a new one, but I chose the same car as I really had enjoyed my old one.

I'm still not sure... yet!

Faults:

Absolutely nothing at all.

Services - oil, filters just regular things.

MOT passed; no problems, not even washer water or extra oil.

Have replaced wiper blades and had new tyres when punctured, but other than that not a dickie bird has been wrong with it.

General Comments:

Fantastic.

Faults:

Nothing.

General Comments:

I love the look of the Pluriel, it really is a modern day 2CV. It looks great roof up or down.

The 1400 engine is nippy and economical, returning an average 43 MPG motorway / urban driving.

A bit slow on hills, but it's OK if you use the gears at the right time and keep the revs up.

Does not inspire swift driving. It's no sports car, more of a tourer.

Series 2 cars built after 2005 address the earlier leaking issues with revised roof seals that work!

Spider mode (side bars removed) makes you smile and turns heads, and with some practice you can convert it in under 5 minutes.

Manual gearbox is great, no sensodrive hassles.

Faults:

Plastic tram snapped (brittle plastic in sun and heat) - roof leaks, wind billows. Citroen won't let me just pay to get that part replaced - I have to replace the whole roof mechanism (i.e. a quarter of the car for a 2cm x 2cm x 2cm piece of cracked plastic). Price of only solution offered by Citroen = £2,000 for roof min + £500 labour to fit. Price of new plastic tram that is broken = approx £10 cost, if I could buy one.

As a consequence, have to wear ear plugs when driving above 50mph because of wind noise.

Leaking roof is ruining upholstery.

Car frequently just cuts out when driving. Potentially lethal.

Mentioned noisy roof when I bought it to dealer, was told that "that is how things are with convertibles". What sort of car manufacturer designs its vehicles such that when a tiny component breaks, you have to replace a quarter of the car at a price in excess of the total value of the car. Above all, what sort of environmental policy is this - a small component breaks, you end up having to scrap the canvas roof, the rear glass, the runners, everything. Sheer waste, inbuilt obsolescence.

Citroen's only advice to me was to start hunting around salvage yards to see if I could find the component that they won't sell to me.

Do you want / need to be doing business with a company like this? Can you afford to? Citroen were very happy to service my car at extortionate prices for the past five years, but the minute something that snaps - owing to their bad design - and a previously loyal customer seeks their help to resolve the matter, they close ranks and just refuse to show any responsibility. Totally dishonourable.

Don't buy a Citroen, unless you enjoy wasting your cash and dealing with a firm massively lacking in responsibility and fairness to customers.

General Comments:

The one redeeming feature of the car is that when you fold the seats down, you can get quite a bit in it.

However, this hardly makes up for the sodden seat, the wind noise, the rain in your eyes when driving.

And above all, Citroen's cynical exploitation of honest customers in trying to get them to pay £2,500 for a whole new roof assembly when a piece of plastic the size of a lego brick has cracked (due to poor specification by Citroen).

citroensucks@hotmail.com