Citroen AX debut (Citroën AX)

Name: jamieczernik

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Product:	Citroën AX
Date:	08/07/03 (2611 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Cheap, Reliable, Fun

Disadvantages: Poor brakes

I bought my Citroen AX nearly 8 years ago when it was 3 years old. It was previously a motability car and only had 15,000 on the clock. To this day it has, for the most part served me well and it's never broken down once although it hasn't been used much as it still only has 56,000 miles on the clock.

The car itself is very light weight and nippy to drive but can feel a little too light when driving on the motorway and is particularly sensitive to out of balance wheels.

The major problem I've had with this car is that the brakes aren't all that good. The problems with the brakes were recent. The car seemed to shudder through the steering wheel when braking. This little problem eventually cost me over £600 in repairs, many of which I think were unnecessary as the problem was eventually found to be seized callipers at the front.

Apparently the (several) garages that inspected the car had missed the fact that the front calliper slides were seized and this was damaging my brakes disks which ended up with me going through 3 sets in about 4 months. In an attempt to fix the problem the various garages replaced the front ball joints, rear brake disks and drums, front wishbone bushes and I even had one garage tell me that both front hubs had to be replaced as it was these that were "warping" the brake disks. After all these repairs another garage inspected the car and told me about the seized callipers and after having these replaced (along with another new set of disks) the problem has not resurfaced.

I was told that apparently there have been a lot of issues like this with the brakes on the ax, however the hassle I had was mostly related to bad advice from the garages I took the car to (Kwik-Fit, Parks and a small independent garage)

Overall the car has not given me any more problems and always starts without any bother. I would recommend the ax to anyone on a tight budget as they're cheap to run

, however watch out for brake problems.

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ADDENDUM 9th July 2003

This morning I found that someone tried to steal my ax last night. They had ripped out the seal along the bottom of the window of the passenger side door and then must have used a screw driver or something to prise the body open so that they could get their hand in the door and push the lock up. Unfortunately for them it must of been harder than they thought as they never go in to the car. I think they were joyriders as the radio in the ax is specifically made to fit and would be hard to get rid of. A nice chap at the local body repair shop put it back together for me, but the side is still a bit dented :-( The police didn't seem interested either - I suspect the report was filed in the bin when I left. Never mind atleast they never got the car.

Summary: