1986 Citroen Visa GTi from UK and Ireland - Comments

Gear linkage popped out of place with monotonous regularity.

Thermostat for fan failed, causing the car to overheat.

All sorts of electrical problems.

Air flow meter needed re-setting.

Stalling at low speeds.

The GTi is basically a body-kitted Visa with the same engine as the Peugeot 205 GTi crammed into it. It therefore suffered from the Visa's diabolical build quality (I think they made them from old Gitanes packets) and the 205's questionable reliability. Having previously owned a BMW 518i, it was a bit of a culture shock.

On the odd occasion it ran, the performance was excellent, with a very free-revving engine. The car was lighter than the 205, so was fractionally quicker off the mark. Winding up XR3i drivers has never been more fun.

Handling was good too, with a wide front track, and reasonably chunky 185 tyres.

The interior was crap. Unsupportive seats, cheap plastics, and instruments that had minds and moods of their own. The Visa is also a very narrow car, so it helps to be on good terms with your passenger. Long journeys weren't much fun.

The boot space was pathetic. With the 1.6 engine, the spare tyre had to be relocated from its usual home above the engine (apparently it directed the air flow on early air-cooled Visas) to the boot, which it filled.

It was fun while it lasted, and I got more trading it in than I paid for it. You wouldn't catch me buying another one though.

I think you are expecting a bit much of the build quality as a Visa cost a third of the BMW when sold new.

How can you comment on the interior being crap and tiny and unsupportive and having no boot???

I assume you viewed and test drove the car before hand and if the boot was so small why buy it, if the drive was so uncomfortable why buy it?

Once again, another person who doesn't seem to have an idea on how to use this site to inform people. How many times do people buy a car without seeing it first, if the boot didn't suit your needs you shouldn't have bought it, surely you would know about the interior and size inside when you test drove it so why moan about it now.

No wonder Citroen gets such bad feedback from people who don't seem to have a clue, pity!

Whether or not you realise it when you buy it, this is still a poorly designed, shoddily built car. Ignoring a car's (many) faults won't help potential buyers.

Maybe something that has to be cleared out about the Visa GTI. Citroën has built this version of the Visa purely for rally homologation reasons in the 1600 class. As such, there is a fundamental difference with the - more commercial - reason Peugeot had for the development of the 205 GTI 1600. By the way, the Visa GTI was quite succesful in rallies.

The Visa GTI is a fantastic car to drive and certainly a collectable, but indeed it does not make any compromise. It's a small car with a big engine, where everything has been pressed to the limit. They even had to take the front sub-chassis from the BX to be able to get the engine in, and they had to enlarge the front wings because otherwise the wheels would not be covered.

The reason that Citroën has decided to develop the Visa GTI is a consequence of the fact that market research learned that a Visa diesel would be appropriate. The modifications made to the body of a normal Visa for a diesel engine are similar to the modifications made for the GTI.

The built quality, however, is quite good for a car built for this purpose. In fact, many Visa GTI's were completely stripped and tuned to rally cars.

I'm the owner of 25 classic cars, of which a few small hot hatches from the 80's. A Renault 5 GT Turbo, a Volkswagen Polo G40, a Peugeot 205 Turbo 16, a Visa GTI 115 and a Ford Fiesta XR2i. It's interesting how the Citroën is always attacked for his built quality. The be honest, the built quality of these other cars is in no ways better than that of the Citroën. Moreover, the Citroën proves to have the most reliable engine, while the Polo has without any doubt the most unreliable one.

Please, if you don't understand the car, nor the reason why it was developed, stay of it and leave it for oldtimer enthousiasts. A Visa GTI is a car with a history, and since there aren't to much of them, they should be collected and treated with respect.

I wasn't aware of the reason that Citroen developed this car to go rallying but I do wonder if part of the reason was to get into the 'GTI' market as they had already marketed the 'GT'.

Whatever the interesting reasons are for its birth, the fact of the matter is that it was marketed as normal car with no disclaimer such as "We have shoehorned this together purely to meet rally homogolation rules and please expect it to fall apart". Mine was mechanically perfect and it was the parts shared from the Visa parts bin that let it down, such as door frames leaking at speed, petrol cap leaking, electrical connections corroding etc.

I actually loved the car, and wouldn't mind still owning it today if I had the space and time to do so.

Another point is that some users appear to think that cars are solely works of art, and that any criticism of them is a lack of understanding by the owner. A test drive is not enough time to analyze every aspect of the design, and sometimes things that didn't seem important when you bought the car become so later on (e.g. small boot, fuel consumption etc) when ones circumstances change.

Furthermore both good and bad aspects of design should be applauded and criticized in proportion, so that we can learn to make better cars. Cars are fundamentally pieces of engineering with I agree, an art angle, but the "love it, for what it is" attitude is nonsensical.

I think if you ever owned one of these cars then it probably left its mark on you, I remember mine as being one of the most fun and remarkable vehicles I have ever owned. Covered in dents, rusty, nightmare electrics, but still I loved it. Never quite felt like that about my later 205's, Pininfarina or not.