The idea of a Frenchman buying a right-hand-drive Citroën in the UK for export back to his homeland sounds bizarre, but that's exactly what one French car lover did 20 years ago, before last year selling the car back to a Brit now happily driving it in the UK.
"I like French cars," says Richard Head, its new London-based owner. "I like their quirkiness, which I'm pleased to see Citroën and Renault appear to be rediscovering. My first company car in 1990 was a Citroën BX, and I have a Renault 5 Turbo. I wanted another French car as my daily driver.
"I liked the idea of a Citroën SM but good ones are hard to find and expensive. In any case, I wanted something more modern that I could use every day and justify, in my man-maths way, as a daily driver.
"So I gravitated towards the Citroën CX, then to the Turbo versions, and then I discovered they made a CX Turbo 2 Prestige and decided that was the one for me."
Richard immediately started looking and soon found the very thing: a tidy-looking CX 25 Turbo 2 Prestige registered in 1986 and showing a reasonable 150,000 miles. "It was advertised in the back of a monthly car magazine," he says.
"Although it was right-hand drive, it was being sold by a Frenchman living in France! Prestige Turbo 2s are extremely rare. For example, only five were registered in the UK. I dare say he'd had trouble finding a good left-hand-drive one in his own country. He'd bought it 20 years ago and in the past 10 years he claimed he'd spent £30,000 restoring it.
"He wanted £30,000 for it, but with each issue of the magazine it was still being advertised and at a lower price every time. I decided to be patient and then it appeared at auction. It was my chance and I got it for £12,500, or about what a decent Turbo 2 costs."
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What a star! I'm lucky to have a CX GTi Turbo 2 which is just wonderful to drive and to look at! The first owner of my car was designer Geoff Matthews, who left his role as Chief Designer at Citroen and set up a small design consultancy in the UK. The CX was his company car from '88-'93. Longest single trips I. My ownership have been 200 miles in a day to FOTU '24 and '25... ran perfectly and could've kept on going for hours! Vive la CX!
Good man! I drove my 1991 CX 25 GTi Turbo 2 (the last petrol-powered CX saloon ever registered in the UK) as daily in London for the first year or two I owned it (2013/ 14) doing about 15k miles in two years. The day after I bought it, I took it to La Vie En Bleu at Prescott and drove it up the hill, whch was quite a thrill.
I've taken it to France a number of times, where it always gets loads of 'Monseur! Belle voiture!'
We had our honeymoon in it, driving from Glasgow to Bordeaux, on to Urrugne in Basque, San Sebastian, Narbonne and Cap d'Agdes. I drove it back to Glasgow from Cap d'Agdes in one go, 1350 miles. It was great - though cruise control would've made it better.
It's here with me in Ireland now, though has a gentler existence these days.
Miss seeing that car and the Twingo on Twitter over the years. Hope you're well mate
Thanks, pal. To misquote the Lemonheads: it's a shame about Twitter.