1991 Citroen ZX Advantage from UK and Ireland - Comments

Well, what can I say, the vehicle belongs to my step dad, personally I drive a Rover 827 and Jaguar Sovereign 3.6, but thought I would mention this vehicle due to its amazing unreliability.

Take a car with a really good initial reception, add a few years and what do you get? A tired, nasty car... amazing that people slate Rovers and Jaguars, IMHO they're miles ahead of this shocking example of modern motoring.

I regularly service and maintain the vehicle once every 6000 miles, with gearbox oil changes and other fluid changes, and how does this lovely car repay me? Number one, the gearbox loses 5th gear, 4th gear and general integrity, great. A large bill for another box, and lost of aggro later, and I finish fitting the box.

Now, last night whilst checking over the engine, marvelling at its smallness compared to my 2.7, I noticed a lovely oil leak from the head gasket, I then removed the rad cap and noticed some serious emulsifying of oil in there, great, now I need to remove the head, strip down, skim and replace the head gasket.

The interior is also very flimsy and plastitronic using low quality (IMHO) materials.

The outer panels are typically French and would appear to be made from paper.

Overly I am not endeared to this family run about and would much rather he got rid and purchased a Rover 200 series.

Now for some positive praise on this motor car. It rides in the traditional Citroen fashion, despite being a normal torsion bar/coil spring setup and is comfortable to drive and ride in.

The interior space is good and it does make a practical hold all, it suits my step dads purposes well but just doesn't have the reliability, ease of working on, and indestructability of my Sovereign or Sterling.

Economy probably scrapes 35MPG, but there's more to life than MPG!!

Overall, the bad points are far outweighing the good, the only Citroens I would consider are the large executive models like the DS/SM/CX and XM, all brilliant cars IMHO, they just seem to have lost their way on the smaller effort. A shame.

What a beautiful comparison... You compare a ZX with a 1.4 l gasoline engine (what we call in France a "bas de gamme", which means the cheapest model the constructor will put on the market, to a Jaguar Sovereign 3.6 and to the Rover 827). Guess who will win??? Moreover the car is 10 years old and 190000 km to it with a stepfather who was maybe a charming person, maybe, but it is hard for us to compare his driving skills to yours or to know if the vehicle was maintained correctly.

Likewise, to compare the interior quality of a ZX to that of a Jaguar is absurd. In 1991 a Jaguar like yours cost about 350000 F and a ZX about 65000 F so the difference of quality is correlated to the 5-6 fold difference of the price tag. I have owned a 1.9D ZX for 8 years with 358000 km (217000 miles) on it, the original gear and head gasket. Of course I never tried to compare it to a Jaguar, Rolls or Ferrari...

This chap does have a point!!! In defence of the writer I have experience of a ZX and a Rover 400 of the same year (1993) and have to say that the Rover has maintained its condition far better (IMHO!!!).

In France Citroën has a much better reputation than Rover. However no objective estimations of quality have been carried out to compare ZX to the Rover 400 series. In all the reactions I detect a large amount of local patriotism: for an Englishman vehicles constructed in GB are necessarily better than the ones made in France and vice-versa. There is a long history of love-hate relationships between the two countries.

The Citroen ZX has a better reputation than the Rover in the UK for handling and ride just not build quality.

My reasons for writing this review are to show how short sighted people are. The British automotive product is constantly slated, abused, ridiculed but for no good reason, yes a few dodgy cars in the 70's and they have never really recovered, what makes me sick is the fact that people criticise what they do not know.

I feel I am in a good position to criticise as I have had to experience the many servicing joys on the Citroen ZX, which I have maintained since purchase, and his previous vehicle, a Renault 11. Both these flimsy vehicles are constantly having issues, whereas the supposedly crap Rover 800 series and Jaguar XJ40 that I also own, have had no problems. I also own an 820 Turbo with the Rover engine, and guess what, no problems. So I rest my case... one or two problems on a Rover make big headline news, people think they're crap, but, Citroen, BMW, Mercedes can have a whole host of recalls and it'll never make the news.

During its life the Rover 800 series had 5, yes 5 recalls, the 1991 - 1999 BMW 3 series had 20, and the Citroen ZX had a fair few as well, but those 5 the Rover had, all minor trim issues, made motoring headlines... oohh no the electric windows don't work, Rover build quality is still shoddy, I say NO IT'S NOT! what makes me sick to the stomach is people criticising the British car product with no knowledge, or ownership experience of the vehicles they are criticising.

I have posted this experience on here because, yes, I may have got a particularly bad ZX, but suffice to say, I would never ever buy another, for cost of ownership, the XJ40 and 827 are working out cheaper added together!

My Mansions worth.

I have a ZX and think it is the best car ever made. Ignore all the comments above, they were unlucky.

I am just about to buy another one.

Good luck with your new ZX purchase, I wrote the main review, and it seems from other ZX owners I have spoken with, my step fathers experiences are not un-common, avoid like the Plague IMHO. Still, each to their own and all that.

Sorry, I have to agree with the writer of this report. Until a few years ago the only car I would buy was a Honda, however I made the big mistake I changed my amazingly reliable Honda for a amazingly unreliable Z X. Even though it was service every 6000 miles it just kept breaking down. 1 gear box, 4 brake calipers, 1 head gasket, 1 heater matrix and 3 clutches later I've finaly cut my losses a brought... yeah you guessed it a Rover!! And so far it absolutely fantastic! You just can't compare the 2!

I'm sorry, but having read all the ZX reviews here and many on other sites like this, I think you'll find there are plently of extremely reliable ZX's out there.

Comparing the Rover 200/400 series to the ZX... yes the Rover is very well built, quick and decent handling, but you mentioned Citroen and head gaskets... the Rover K Series motor has an appalling head gasket/reliability record, and I know 2 people who have K Series powered cars.. both nearly new and very well mantained, and the heads have blown at 20/30,000 miles... and both have been fixed (badly) by Rover...

Now I'll move onto rust... the amount of rusty Rovers around is unbelievable... rusty ZX are a very rare occurance. I have owned a ZX (1.4i) for the past 6 years (38,000 miles when bought... well over 100,000 miles now) and during this time I've had NOT ONE breakdown or issue with the car, just servicing every 6,000 miles.

Its is true that the 1360cc carb unit in the ZX is less than brilliant... however go for the 1992 on 1360cc tu injection ZX, it transforms the car's reliability and performance. Carb ZX are best avoided. Injection models are usually very good.