9th Dec 2009, 08:01

To the above comment:

Are you talking about the new C5 or the old C5?

If you have that much experience with the car (having knowledge of 2 engine variants), could you please leave a review of it? I am interested in reading as many objective opinions as I can.

Thank you.

1st Apr 2010, 06:01

Regarding the comments on the C5 giving problems, I can assure you that I have driven my 2004 C5 Automatic for over 80,000 kms, and have never put a drop of oil in it, except for the three 30,000 km services I've had.

And having driven in Canada, the "Snow" button should help handle the roads adequately, as I have experienced in 100mms of mud in Africa!

I cannot believe the number of bad reports unless I have a "special" C5.

13th Mar 2014, 22:54

I can say that. I own a 2003 C5 2.0 HDI with more than 713000km... So you were saying that they are unreliable? :D

3rd Feb 2018, 02:34

Mine is from 2003 and has 758000km - 2.0HDI.

Happy with it.

3rd Feb 2018, 19:39

It's averages - and each owner/reviewer's experience. For sure, there will always be cars of each example that actually don't give problems, or nothing enough to annoy an owner. It isn't necessarily INEVITABLE that a car with many bad reviews will breakdown, but there is a likelihood, possibly high. But there are enough cars out there that run well enough for people to keep buying the car or the brand. Notice that Citroen, Peugeot, even Fiat are still alive; you can't just say it's simply national pride, since many American or British car brands are now gone.

20th Mar 2019, 06:10

The Citroen engines are Peugeot HDI engines. We have a C3 14 HDI and a C5 20 HDI 2007 and we never had any oil consumption problems. Something must have happened for such a good engine to start using so much oil for sure.

Besides, I know the weakness of turbo engines. Here is the important detail:

99% of the time, it is not the engine but the engine turbo that starts to consume oil through its worn out bearings.

Turbo shafts spin at a very high speed. If the engine oil is not suitable for a turbo driven car or it is not the recommended one; yes, the shaft wears out and excess oil is consumed.

Unfortunately some owners do not service the car on time & sometimes mechanics use cheaper oils too, since the recommended oil for any modern diesel car is not cheap by any measure.

You need to say if the car was always serviced on time. What engine oil (suitable?) was used? Was the thermostat ever removed?

On the other hand, any car will start consuming oil due to excessive wear, but I have seen this happen on some cars of any make really.

And here is a tip. My C5 has over 140000 Km. I changed the oil every 5000 Km.