rcandelori

I chose the C4 because it was bloody awesome to look at and to drive and plus its different to all the plain-jane cars on the road over here. Yes, I could have bought a gorgeous Monaro, but Holdens tend to have bad reliability and fall to pieces after about 3 years. And who can afford a V8 guzzling 20 Litres per 100km when petrol is $1.45/litre. Plus, you can only go 60km/h in most urban contexts in Sydney. The motorways are limited to 90km/h, sometimes 110km/h so all that horsepower would go to waste.

With all the crap down under about a "fair go" there is this silly Luxury Car tax of about 35% applies to cars over $57,000 AUD, which pretty much means any luxury car that isn't locally built. Add to that a 10% Goods and Services Tax (aka VAT) and European Cars are very expensive, hence the popularity of cheap as chips Japanese and Korean cars. For example, my C4 VTS Coupe 180, with full leather, panoramic sunroof and metallic paint (noir obsidien) came in at $44,500 in Australia. The same specs in the UK would be 17,500 pounds. Go figure. The C5 doesn't attract luxury car tax in its standard top of the range trim at $55,990, but tick a few options and you hit luxury car tax territory. They start off at $39,990 in basic trim. A Fiat Grande Punto (just released in Australia - big time lag down here), the 1.4 petrol starts off at $19,990 and its equipped with the poverty pack. The top of the range 1.9 diesel is $27,900. I believe they start off at around 9000 Euros in Europe, so the difference is huge. So yeah, European cars are expensive in Australia.

I've had a few minor niggles, but the car has been very reliable. Problems fixed since June 2005: -Limp revision mirror in extreme heat. -Front arm rest with a mind of its own - sliding forward every time I break. -CD stacker skipping when touching the front arm rest -Rattling windows -Oil leak -Airbag recall -loose screw rattling in the boot trim Problems that dealers claim they can't reproduce: -Radio periodically forgets stations -i.e. turn car off, then turn it back on and the RDS displays the correct station but actual frequency is incorrect. -Door trim rattles when driving on course bitumen (conveniently, the surrounding roads of the dealership have smooth roads) Otherwise, everything else has been formidable. I was a tad nervous when I first bought the car given Citroen's past reputation for reliability, but the C4 really has been a good car and the minor rattles here and there are nothing in the grand scheme of things. Turn the fabulous radio up and everything is fine.

The C6 has been listed at nearly $100,000 in Australia. The used value in 3 years time would be a truly scary prospect, despite how lovely the car is.