This car wasn't going to be a keeper, but it happens now that it is so it's time for a thread to be dedicated to it after realising it was taking over my Princess thread a bit too much, the story began here: retrorides.proboards.com/thread/123005/1980-austin-princess-more-xantia?page=67
Xantias are in a bit of a no-man's land at the moment, like a lot of 90s cars. They're pretty anonymous in modern traffic and daily use and considered a bit new for the full-on retro experience. They come with a lot of toys, mine isn't top of the range but it still comes with air conditioning (working), electric windows all round (working), remote (not working anymore) central locking (working), power steering (working) and a built-in immobiliser, all things you'd expect of a modern car. Fact is, this car is 17 years old now but isn't really showing that age, park it next to an Escort of the same age and the Escort looks antiquated.
So how am I going to make this interesting here? Mainly, by keeping it cleaner than a clean thing and sticking to a very rigid 90s OEM ethos with modifications, many of which are very easy to achieve and very easy to get wrong. Less is definitely more and I'm not very good at less. Originally, my brother bought the car but it hated him and kept breaking so he gave it to me, this is what we were faced with.
The Xsara alloys did suit it remarkably well, but many, many years of living under trees and never being deeply cleaned made a solid car look rougher than a badger's bottom. The interior looked pretty good on the cleanliness front until I started deep cleaning.
Came up fairly quickly, and was a good way to spend a sunny afternoon.
After a few days of hard graft, my brother and I had cut through the majority of the chalk white paint and tree sap and general dirt to find that underneath it all there was quite a good thickness of paint all over and really very, very minimal cosmetic faults.
The rear outer lenses were both damaged, one had a hole and the other a crack. I was putting this as low priority until someone reversed into the cracked one in a car park and broke it even more, I was not happy about this.
But luck was on my side and I found an as-new set on eBay for hardly anything. I also got a bit carried away and end up removing the tailgate lights to clean behind them and resealing the tailgate membrane which was occasionally letting water in. I even peeled back the loose bits on the rear number plate, fettled out as much dirt as I could then reglued it before putting it back on the car, just because it looked so rough.
A swift bit of debaging action - see, typical 90s stuff - to the tailgate saw the rear end looking very, very nice.
I made a start tidying up the scraped rear arch and the long crease in the rear quarter, neither of which were bad but both of which still need a little more work to be perfect.
I also tidied up the other rust-stained arch and revealed a bad repair, cleaned it up and put some top coat on. This is a common rot spot and about the only rot spot on Xantias. It will be repaired fairly soon, for now it's been tidied, treated and painted so it looks better and the rust is slowed until I can get some free time with the welder. The hole is in the outer skin of a triple-skinned area and isn't structural but would likely fail an MoT if presented in this condition so it will be addressed before very much longer.
Also cleaned out the fuel filler pocket and flap, both of which were gunged up with ick so badly it wouldn't drain.
It's a bit of an odd car for me too this one. It's extremely capable, runs on veg oil so incredibly cheap, has my favoured suspension type of fluid in spheres and comes equipped with a turbo to make hills as easy as flat roads. It's comfortable, competent and reliable (so far) and while I'm not the biggest fan of the driver's seat, I can't really find fault with it. This is easily the nicest car I've owned so I want to keep it that way and make it nicer still if I can. Certainly, it's probably the most sensible car to be using while the Princess is undergoing some serious sparkly stick action, which you can read about over here: retrorides.proboards.com/thread/123005/1980-austin-princess-more-xantia?page=1
Xantias are in a bit of a no-man's land at the moment, like a lot of 90s cars. They're pretty anonymous in modern traffic and daily use and considered a bit new for the full-on retro experience. They come with a lot of toys, mine isn't top of the range but it still comes with air conditioning (working), electric windows all round (working), remote (not working anymore) central locking (working), power steering (working) and a built-in immobiliser, all things you'd expect of a modern car. Fact is, this car is 17 years old now but isn't really showing that age, park it next to an Escort of the same age and the Escort looks antiquated.
So how am I going to make this interesting here? Mainly, by keeping it cleaner than a clean thing and sticking to a very rigid 90s OEM ethos with modifications, many of which are very easy to achieve and very easy to get wrong. Less is definitely more and I'm not very good at less. Originally, my brother bought the car but it hated him and kept breaking so he gave it to me, this is what we were faced with.
The Xsara alloys did suit it remarkably well, but many, many years of living under trees and never being deeply cleaned made a solid car look rougher than a badger's bottom. The interior looked pretty good on the cleanliness front until I started deep cleaning.
Came up fairly quickly, and was a good way to spend a sunny afternoon.
After a few days of hard graft, my brother and I had cut through the majority of the chalk white paint and tree sap and general dirt to find that underneath it all there was quite a good thickness of paint all over and really very, very minimal cosmetic faults.
The rear outer lenses were both damaged, one had a hole and the other a crack. I was putting this as low priority until someone reversed into the cracked one in a car park and broke it even more, I was not happy about this.
But luck was on my side and I found an as-new set on eBay for hardly anything. I also got a bit carried away and end up removing the tailgate lights to clean behind them and resealing the tailgate membrane which was occasionally letting water in. I even peeled back the loose bits on the rear number plate, fettled out as much dirt as I could then reglued it before putting it back on the car, just because it looked so rough.
A swift bit of debaging action - see, typical 90s stuff - to the tailgate saw the rear end looking very, very nice.
I made a start tidying up the scraped rear arch and the long crease in the rear quarter, neither of which were bad but both of which still need a little more work to be perfect.
I also tidied up the other rust-stained arch and revealed a bad repair, cleaned it up and put some top coat on. This is a common rot spot and about the only rot spot on Xantias. It will be repaired fairly soon, for now it's been tidied, treated and painted so it looks better and the rust is slowed until I can get some free time with the welder. The hole is in the outer skin of a triple-skinned area and isn't structural but would likely fail an MoT if presented in this condition so it will be addressed before very much longer.
Also cleaned out the fuel filler pocket and flap, both of which were gunged up with ick so badly it wouldn't drain.
It's a bit of an odd car for me too this one. It's extremely capable, runs on veg oil so incredibly cheap, has my favoured suspension type of fluid in spheres and comes equipped with a turbo to make hills as easy as flat roads. It's comfortable, competent and reliable (so far) and while I'm not the biggest fan of the driver's seat, I can't really find fault with it. This is easily the nicest car I've owned so I want to keep it that way and make it nicer still if I can. Certainly, it's probably the most sensible car to be using while the Princess is undergoing some serious sparkly stick action, which you can read about over here: retrorides.proboards.com/thread/123005/1980-austin-princess-more-xantia?page=1
Is yours a very early car? I notice it has chevrons on the bonnet rather than the grill. I've been considering getting that grille for mine instead of the one it has too.
. If you get bushes, I'd go either for Poly items or Motaquip or TRW. I'd say Citroen but I doubt they are cheap.