Introducing....My motor!!! The Saxo I'm going to tell you about is the 1.1litre SX model born in 1996. Now if you want to buy a Saxo then you will have to get it second hand. Citroen stopped making them and did the whole new beginning thing for the mellenium with the C3. Very similar to the Saxo but more expensive to buy and maintain with more expensive and harder to locate parts.

Now then if you do need to replace these parts it's not as scary as it may seem. According to Jonny It's all easy to get to, and simple enough if you know what you're doing. This sounds about right as it only took him a day to do the drive shafts and four new brakes (discs and callipers) and then another day for the clutch and general tidying up. 3months later the whole of the exhaust took another day. This wouldn't have taken as long if some numb nuts hadn't bodged up trying to put a heeeuuuge back-box on and made a mess of the welding!!!
The parts that you will need are easy to find from ebay or your local car parts shop. Yes the saxo went out of production 7 years ago but it is a rather popular car so the parts are still made. This is where our old pals Bits-For-Cars come in...again!!! The drive shafts (shaftS there are two of them on a Saxo) cost £40 when we took the old ones back. Exhaust was £80 for the full system and all new brakes system on all four corners cost £60 all together. A new clutch cost just £40
A full service icluding new plugs and oil change only cost me just over £50 if I remember rightly.
Not bad eh £270 to get her up to MOT standard. Even better if you or a friend is mechanically minded and then you don't have huge labour charges from a mechanic.

Insurance wise you're going to love it. Take me for an example. This is my first ever car on my first ever brand new shiny licence. £654 for the year with £100excess. This quote was baised on having 0 no claims,a full licence which was just 3days old at the time of insuring and that was on third party fire and theft. For the benifit of this review and because Im so nice I've just got a quote from direct line which was £479 Fully comprehensive with £150 excess not bad at all I think.

Now then alot of people avoid buying second hand cars because they are affraid of the costs. So they go and pay £10000 for a nice little motor, brand new with 12months free insurance and a three year waranty. Drive it out of the show room and they've lost £4000. Yes you dont have to MOT it for 3years and Yes you wont have to incur any major maintenance costs because of the waranty. But you do the maths, £4000 for driving it out of the show room as opposed to spending £200 every three years for parts and £50 a year for an MOT. If you aren't or nobody in you're family or friends is mechanically minded then the costs will go up, however I still think it's better than buying a new car.

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What do I get for that money?
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Well the features in my SX include 3 doors, a sun roof, electric front windows, central locking, key-code imobiliser, steering lock, factory fitted alarm and what would have been a cruddy cassette player.
There is no power steering which is great for getting rid of those bingo wings and as the car only weights just over £800KG it's not that much of a downfall.

Inside it has fabric upholstury has worn quite well on the seats. You can see that it has faded and lost some of it's lustre but come on she's an old girl now!!! Around the door handles the fabric has split and frayed which is just too much hassle to sort out. It's easier to blow it and buy new door casings. The carpets are grey, as are the mats. They also cleaned up very well and are not worn through in patches at all. The dashboard is the usual black plastic with no chips or scratches. The clocks are just the petrol guage, speedometer and rev counter. There a few warning lights at the bottom for the air bag, hand brake, oil pressure, temperature and stuff like that.

In the middle you've got the

Pictures of Citroen Saxo 1.1

This is what My car looks like

The engine is pretty quiet to say this car is over 10 years old so the engines wear well. However that depends on weather a chav or a grandma was the previous owner. I have no idea but i suspect a grandma to say its only done 70,000 miles in 10 years!!! Perhaps if a chav had owned it then the engine would be noisier and more difficult.

The boot is the same but the rear seats fold down. You can pull out the actual seat bit and fold down the backs so that they're totally flat.to fit in loads of stuff when say for example helping a mate to move house.

The clutch also isn't great. It's biting point is far lower down than what I'm used to and it doesn't like you to use clutch control. It's difficult to keep it from creeping forwards and also this will wear the clutch quickly. Changing gears is smooth though, the clutch doesn't cause a bit of bother there. Whilst on about gears it can be stubborn about reverse. It sometimes takes a bit of pumping on the clutch to get it in reverse. Also if you don't get it in reverse properly then it will just pop out of reverse unless you hold the gear stick where it's supposed to be.

Right then to sum it up this car is pretty great. I'm not happy about the common problems with those parts. It's shoddy French design that makes them go but on the other hand they are designed to be replacable and to cause less strain on the more expensive parts like the engine and gearbox. It's alot of fun to drive and a fantastic first car. Very cheap running costs make it perfect for anyone who is wanting a little run around which won't guzzle petrol or cost alot in insurance.