My Car History
Citroën C1
A Little About my newest Car
As you may know, my Proton was taken
to the garage a while back with a damaged window winder. On it's
return, I was informed that the clutch was slipping and would need to
be replaced soon. Naturally, this meant the car wasn't much use to me,
and would cost much cash to fix - however there was a better solution.
My Grandma had been going on since I had my Proton about it being
unsafe, and that she wanted to buy me a nice brand new car. This was a
perfect opportunity, and so we agreed to let her buy me a new car, and
so here it is!
Unsurprisingly, it cost a fair bit more than
the old Proton - but as a brand new car it was definately worth it.
It's nice and shiney, and it drives really well. At about the same size
as dad's C2 but with 5 doors instead of 3, it's surprisingly roomey
inside - with ample comfortable leg space in the back and front.
With
a built-in CD player and MP3 hookup, the car's ideal audio wise - as I
now don't need to struggle with extra wires and things everywhere! It's
got aircon, and so's a very comfortable car in the warm and cold, and
despite only having one front wiper does a decent good job of clearing
the screen from rain.
Most of the time it's quite a nippy
car, although with only 1 litre of engine it naturally struggles a
little up steep hills if you'rein the wrong gear! The engine itself is
nicely quite... when you want it to be! When accelerating through 3-5
thousand revs, it's noise is somewhat reminiscent of a proper-job
sports car!
This model comes with a rev counter, crazily
attatched by a stalk to the main unit - this sounds odd, and many
dislike it in reviews I've read, but I really think it suits the car,
and is a cool way of showing the revs.
Minorly Technical Stuff
Well
I was gonna write some tech stuff here, but most of it I've mentioned
above! I guess I could mention it's 0-62mph is about 13 seconds, but
apparently it's over-estimated to cut insurance - I've managed it in
about 11 seconds, but it's difficult to judge without a passenger to
time you!
Images
Now I've got my new car, I've taken loads of shots. To save my bandwidth, you can see them
here.
Modding
As you may know, I've started to modify my car. The first thing was the
rear spoiler. I reckon it looks nice, and it's an official spoiler
fixed on by Copthorne Coachworks near Crawley - a spray shop that I was
reccommended by Citroen. Cost about £200 in total.
The next things I tried were two new front speakers. It's incredibly
easy to get the covers off, and fairly easy to add replacement 4"
speakers. Unfortunately, they aren't the best of quality for some
reason, and also have a tendancy to make the whole dash vibrate with an
annoying buzz. For now, I've replaced them with stock speakers until I
can get rear speakers and a new head-unit.
My third mod is to replace the dashboard centre console lights from a
boring orange colour to a nice vibrant blue. I've tried several things
to get the right blue without being too bright, and the method that
worked best is to have the LED bulbs I bought for £1, with the
original bulb covers affixed. Unfortunately, I split one cover taking
it off the old bulb, but I've made it look good still.
At the moment, I'm trialling some UV bulbs instead of the Blue - They
look okay, and aren't too bright, but unfortunately don't do as much as
I'd hoped - I expected a club-style UV light that'd show up all the
white parts of the car (and people's eyes) which'd look cool for
night-time driving. Unfortunately, it simply looks like a rather
girlish shade of pink, so I'll probably replace them back to original
blue.
I'm also thinking about replacing the main cabin light bulb to make it
brighter or maybe a different colour - if I got a UV light, it may
create the effect I was after with the dash, but probably not provide a
sensible amount of light.
Another UV possibility is to make something out of the two bulbs from
the dash, and make it into a cigarette-lighter lamp that looks nice?
Proton GLS
A little about my first Car
Well here's a little about my first car. It was a kind of bluey colour,
and had barely a rust mark on it. Inside and out looked really well
looked after, and it handled nicely. As it was my first petrol, the
test drive was a little of a new experience!
Surprisingly, despite the good points about the car, it only cost
£490 - a further £1,580 going into the insurance! Took a
while to get it though - after we'd put a deposit on the car I needed
to get insurance for it (which took minutes), but the dealer wasn't in
work again until the afternoon. Best thing about it's price, is that
once I had got the car home mum said "happy birthday!". Yay!
Took it for a short drive - showed off to the Grandparents and such,
then did a nice drive down to Dawlish. It drove better than expected,
quite smooth and quiet, whilst still being fast and nippy enough to get
up hills and out of corners.
On the 17th April I had the car serviced - they put new windscreen
wipers on, but aside from that found nothing to fault, even
complimenting the car! Promptly after having it serviced, I had new
rear tyres put on (the old ones were fairly bad) and refilled it's
tanks. It had a little problem with something regarding the fuel
guage/tank - it only filled up 35 litres before the pump can't put any
more in, yet the tank is 45 litres. Also, the guage still didn't read
full - so where the problem was I don't know. Ah well, it still did 308
miles to that tank, an mpg average of about 40.
Minorly Technical Stuff
For those of you who know what any of this means, here are the tech
specs. It was a Proton GLS Mpi Catalyst 1.3 Litre. Okay, so I only
understand the 1.3 litre bit, but hey. As for audio, it only had a
cassette/radio, but I have an Mp3/CD to Cassette thingy, so l was still
able to use all my musics!
Surprisingly, it was exactly the same length as my parent's Picasso -
but it had a shorter wheelbase so better cornering! It was also exactly
10cm narrower than the Picasso....
Pictures
Well, as expected the pics took a long time to load for most people, so instead you can see them all
here.