My first car was a citroen ax, I bought it in may 2005 for £225 with 10 months mot and tax and 61k on the clock.
I still have it but have stopped using it which I will go into later.

It broke down twice, once when the thermostat stuck closed and caused it to overheat, and another time when the headgasket went .

It has got 89500 on the clock now and has been brilliant, the stuff i have replaced are

brakes

head gasket 87k

ht leads and plugs

thermostat

tyres and stuff

dash bulbs

radiator hoses

brake pipes

front bumper and wing ( after accident)

ball joint and cv boots

bearing in mind this was over 3 years and on a 20 year old car.

It was such a nippy car, and i got 100 out of it once before i realised the brakes were knackered and i shouldn't be going this speed in a then 18 year old car lol, and i ran out of road so I had to slow down. It was very reliable and very good on fuel and I managed to get 250kg of pig food in the back once and it drove fine with me and 2 other guys in.

The amount of times that I had to go to the rescue to my mates when there (newer) cars broke down in my ax. It was funny turning up in an F reg car to sort out an M reg car lol.

It did however, have an irritating appitite for coolant, before the headgasket went, it would get low on coolant every 2000 miles and get an airlock and need topping up/ bleeding. Every part of the cooling system ended up failing, first the radiator hoses weren't that great so i replaced them, then the thermostat, then the heater matrix, then the head gasket (not strictly a part of the system), then the radiator sprung a leak, and putting radweld in killed the waterpump! nevermind. All the problems wern't the cars fault they were mainly because it just wasn't designed to last 20 years.

The reason why I stopped using it is because it needs a new cooling system and the cam timing redone (its not quite right because I didn't know how to refit the cam belt tight enough when I did the head gasket myself) and the starter motor was on its way out. I could get it fixed tomorrow but Its not worth spending the money on so im probably going to convert it to a VTS or somthing. All in all it made a great first car and im not going to get rid of it because im too attached to it.