Faults:

Water Pump sprang a leak.

Upper engine mount snapped in half twice. Adjusted design and is now fine.

3rd gear syncro is on its way out (wear and tear really)

General Comments:

I love this car. I've only owned it for 2weeks, but I can't see myself getting rid of it! The mileage above was covered in just one week! Aimlessly!

It is something different, something fast to surprise your average Merc, BMW or even the mighty mundano!! The engine is awesome, as is the noise!

Supremely comfortable, loaded with gadgets and most still work! Build quality is patchy, but expected of an old French car.

Handling is good. Leans a bit more than the average sporty saloon/hatch because of the hydraulic suspension. But it leans to a point, then is fine. Grip in dry is superb, but hairy in wet (possibly tyres?) Car is very easy to position, and corners can be taking swiftly and with good control as suspension virtually eliminates bump-steer, with a slightly tail happy lift off oversteer vibe going on!!

Brakes are mind blowing. ABS works well, if not cutting in slightly too early.

The body can look tatty if not looked after, and the car does need to be loved. Ignore it and it'll ignore you when you tell it to do something, like start for example!

I will endeavor to keep this car on the road. It is full of character, and is different! Most people will look and either laugh, ponder or totally ignore it! At least it gauges a reaction in a boring world of lookalikes! You do get the odd occasion where someone has owned one, been in one and comes to ask you if you'll blast him around the block to reminisce!

If people weren't afraid of something different, we'd all have moved on a hell of lot by now.

Faults:

Lots of hydraulic suspension parts needed replacement over the last 10 years. Latest was front height corrector (£160+VAT), due to a leak. Now needs a rear height corrector (about the same cost again).

Alternator needed replacement 2 years ago.

Lots of silly little electrical problems. E.g. dirty contacts caused cooling fan to stop working; rear wiper stopped working some time ago, still investigating.

Since I bought the car the engine has been misfiring at exactly 2200 rpm, running fine at every other speed. Number 2 spark plug gets carbon-fouled 2000 miles after replacing.

Drinks 2 gallons of oil between services!

General Comments:

Very comfortable and luxurious for the price, and very good performance too.

The insurance group is quite low for such a high-performance luxury car. But the running costs due to hydraulic system repairs and oil consumption put a slight dampener (I now use a cheaper oil which is also thicker, and therefore less of it gets burnt.)

Faults:

Almost all recently, but, if you think about the 12 years and the half a million kilometers...

The transmission died after 9 years of hard usage.

The electrical windows are lately always going slower and slower and slower.

A hose from the radiator once broke, after 7 years of purchase I think.

A few parts of the interior are broken too, but only because of hard usage and not of faulty manufacturing.

The nightmare though is the constant leakage of brake fluids that started this year.

General Comments:

Maybe all of the above has terrified a few people, but the truth is that the car runs great for a 12 year old, 500.000km middle class car. Many of it's "friends", Alfa Romeo 33, Nissan Sunny etc. have died way before her.

The motor is very nice mainly because of it's great torque at low rpm. This lets you drive it almost as an automatic. It can practically start with any gear.

The brakes are out of this world.

The suspension is like an Arabian carpet.

The grip is so good that I got tired trying to make it slide. Even when it slides it's so smooth that you can easily talk on the phone and slide with it.

The best of all on this car is it's room. You can move a whole town with three loads! I have put so much stuff in it that nobody could believe their eyes. five people cannot just take a trip in this car. They can move in!

This car has grown so good on me that I hate to think of the moment that I will have to replace it in my everyday life.

The reason why I'm writing this review is that I had to express my love for this odd looking car sometime before it leaves my life.