Citroen C5 Courtesy Car.

[jamescarruthers]

Thought it might tickle some people on here that my C6 has been in for repairs for so long (awaiting parts for a month) that I got a call from the garage to say that the MOT expires on my courtesy car, a C5 X7, on Saturday.  Thankfully we have a drive-in place nearby and it passed first time with no prep, which I think keeps the garage happy and me happy as I get to keep driving it until mine is done.   I've replaced a headlight bulb and given it much fuel over about 1000 miles now.

In other news, the C5 X7 2.0 petrol 4-speed automatic is a bloody brilliant drive, but as it only does 29mpg average on my commute I couldn't consider having one when the 3.0 V6 petrol C6 with 6-speed does actually manage 25 mpg.  The C5 X7 is a really nice place to be, handles really well, even on its budget tyres and is really comfy.  Only niggle is that it has one central cup holder inside the bloody arm rest so you can't close it-- stupid really considering the C6 has those fabulous ones that pop out, same as the SAABs had of this era. 

 

Any other courtesy car stories of interest?

[mk2_craig]

Some time in 1999 I took my Fiesta Courier van (which i had been using as a car) into Peoples Ford at Sighthill in Edinburgh for a routine service. They plucked a fully liveried S-reg Courier off their demonstration fleet for me to use -  I could have managed perfectly ok with a normal Fiesta but it was pretty thoughtful of them, especially as I think they had to drag it from Falkirk or somewhere. 
 

Had to go back after the service when I discovered the almost new “performance” air filter element, Pipercross or whatever, that I had not long fitted into the airbox (my van had an carb-fed engine from an XR2 installed) was no longer there having been replaced by a standard paper filter. Amazingly* the performance part was quickly located and handed back to me by one of the apprentices, “yeah we hadn’t yet emptied the bin”, aye right.