1.6 HDi:
Turbo failure is not unkown on this engine, and sure enough ours let go last week. Phone: "Car's broken down, lots of horrible noise, and no power" sure enough, turbo making a racket and plenty of play in the shaft. Now, I had been reading about this, and the cause (apart from the engine being a bit prone to getting sludged up for various reasons) is that PSA / Ford in their wisdom fitted a tiny filter in the oil supply banjo bolt. This gets blocked really easily, closely followed by turbo death. I was going to strip it out in the summer, and remove the filter, but events overtook us! I would urge anyone with this engine (which is fitted in a wide variety of cars, including Ford, MINI and possibly Mazda) to get the filter removed ASAP - it might be a couple of hundred quid, as you have to remove the DPF, which possibly involves removing the radiator (it does on ours!), but it is good insurance against the turbo failing some time later. Seems that about 2011, engine was changed to an 8V unit, and this may not be so prone to the issue.
Fiat 500:
So, as the C4 is off the road whilst the turbo is re-built I have got a F500 on hire this week. Style over substance springs to mind! It's very bouncy, there's plenty of tyre noise, and it's surprisingly twitchy, needing constant correction (although that may be a bit unfair on the marque as I suspect the tracking is well out on this one). The column switches are much too large for the car, and feel really clunky. Rear visiblity is pretty poor, with a large 3/4 panel where I would normally expect to look through when reversing. The orange instrument binnacle and large FIAT symbol on the wheel with a chrome surround does very odd things to my eyes in the dark, with the disconcerting feeling of the steering wheel jumping up and down! It doesn't go of course, but then it's only 1.2 so I suppose that is to be expected.
Safe to say I won't be buying one - loooking forward to slipping the comfortable old glove that is the Xantia back on next week! Although that looks like involving re-fitting the turbo in the rain at the weekend....
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Citroen C4 Picasso 7-st - 1.6 HDi warnin.. new
Citroen C4 Picasso 7-st - 1.6 HDi warnin.. new