Citroen Xantia

Designed by Bertone studio like BX and XM, Xantia catches our eyes with its extraordinary styling. Its handsome lines, neat details and plane surface deliver both dynamic and solid feel, especially in silver.

Enter the cabin, you will find it very spacious and practical, with supportive seats and hatchback, but also very uninspiring. The dashboard and central console have virtually no styling at all, which are too conservative to be a Western car, don't say it is a Citroen. ( Remember the space-age cabin of Citroen DS and BX ? Time has changed everything. )

Xantia's chassis is competent. It rides as good as the class-leading Peugeot 406 ( which French car rides bad ? ), handles only marginally worse than 406, Mondeo and Primera but still better than most rivals. Engines come from the existing PSA units, including a torquey 8 valves 2 litres unit and a newer 16 valves unit which has 135hp. Although not as refined as Japanese engines, the 16 valver provides fine performance.

In short, Xantia is a worthy successor to the BX. Nevertheless, today the competition in this segment is far tougher than 10 years ago, it is unlikely to repeat BX's success.

Xantia Activa - a taste of Citroen's famous active suspension

While the VSX is a good car, one should have higher expectation on the Xantia Activa, which is boosted by turbo-charged engine and semi-active suspensions. Although the blown 8 valver produced useful mid-range acceleration, the hydraulic suspensions is quite disappointing.

Xantia's hydraulic system is similar to that used in XM, but in addition with hydraulic-controlled active anti-roll bars in all wheels. It does all it was designed to be - kills the body roll due to cornering, unbalance load or bumpy road. Anyone who drove it should have wondered how stable Activa is, even in fast cornering it never throws your mother-in-low towards the window. But the suspensions also being too stiff, making the Activa a lot more bumpy in rough road than the VSX. Moreover, perhaps the biggest problem is, no body roll means the driver cannot sense what's going on during hard cornering. Since a driver detects cornering limit by feeling the degree of body roll, the absense of roll makes determining the limit to be impossible until tyre slip happens. Therefore, Xantia Activa can neither satisfy real drivers nor ordinary familiy men.

. Specifications

Model	Xantia 2.0VSX 16v	Xantia Activa
Layout	Front-engine, Fwd	Front-engine, Fwd
Engine	Inline-4, dohc, 4v/cyl.	Inline-4, sohc, 2v/cyl, turbo
Capacity	1998c.c.	1998 c.c.
Power	135 hp	150 hp
Torque	136 lbft	172 lbft
Transmission	5M	5M
Weight	1375 kg	N/A
Top speed	117 mph*	N/A
0-60mph	9.6 sec*	N/A
Best competitors	Ford Mondeo Peugeot 406 VW Passat	Ford Mondeo Peugeot 406 VW Passat
Autozine's choice in this class	Mondeo / 406 / Passat	Mondeo / 406 / Passat

. * Tested by Autocar .