Our 806 MPV goes on holiday to Brittany

Apologies for a rather drawn out lul in preceedings since my last musings. Whats happened of late, in my world of transport? Well, let’s bring you up to speed.

Firstly, I’m still enjoying the remap on the HDI engine. Like an OEM upgrade, it’s only caused goodness and joy to sprout forth. So I’d recommend that for anyone with an HDI lump.

Secondly, the front Michelins were dead, down to the wear indicators. So I purchased a pair of rather oddly named Toyo Proxies (odd name, too close to Poxy?), mainly because I was curious to the difference to Michelins which I had sworn allegiance to several years ago after buying the Synergie. They seem almost as good, but I reckon I can tell there not quite up to the Michelins. Ho hum. The £40.00 I’ve saved seems laughable when you’re going to live with a pair of tires for 30,000 miles or more.

Thirdly, and in preparation for a ten day family jolly in Brittany, our first long trip in the 806, I asked my local garage to undertake an engine flush and oil & filter change on the old girl. I always seem to imagine a slight improvement in performance after I’ve treated the car to an engine flush – which is no doubt a crazy mind game of mine. It makes no difference. But it imagine it’s like giving cat treats to your favourite moggy. You get to feel all benevolent and the cat’s chuffed as heck.

Et voila. The 806 is now happily back on French soil (after a bumpy crossing to Le Havre), and it looks absolutely 100% in its element here. Ten minutes behind the wheel tells me the French love-affair with the MPV is as strong as ever. New Picassos, C4s and 5008s are everywhere. I also notice a distinct lack of those classic black number plates. There’s an odd one or two hanging onto the occassional early 205 and Renault 5, but everyone else has made the switch to Euro White plates with a blue F for France flag.

We were probably two thirds from fully loaded en route to our campsite near Pont L’Abbe. With tire pressures up to 40psi all round, and on the new Toyo’s up front, the 806 behaved in true French form – floating and ambling with box-shaped grace over Brittany’s sweeping D-roads, quietly maintaining 60mph. The most uncomfortable thing was piloting her around roundabouts what felt like the wrong way round. Eugh.

We’ve spotted lots of 806’s and Synergie’s around Brittany, but one particular one stood out. It’s possibly the most unloved 806 I’ve ever seen. Have a look at this:

My review of the Oxygen O-Car IPhone car stereo

I managed to buy one of the first O-Car head units for my MPV – prices seem to be currently fixed around £250.00. I’m a pretty regular Dad, with regular requirements – the main one being I need a car stereo which runs from my iPhone,charges it, and bluetooths the business phone calls. Simple! So you might like to read about my findings.

To keep it short, it’s a good unit but with some fundamental flaws. Sound is perfectly acceptable once adjusted using the sound app provided (which you download from the Apple app store), certainly comparable with an entry-level Sony unit it replaced.

It’s certainly an ingenious solution to use the iPhone 3G or iPhone4 as the head unit, and seemed like pure logic to me on paper. Transitions between playing music on ipod setting to a phone call are seamless, handled by a microphone supplied and the units Bluetooth. Using satnav apps is also fine, but here some cracks appear. I popped in a postcode to my clients address into Navmii’s excellent Navfree app, double clicked to turn on the radio app (the second app you download from app store) only to discover that the radio app can’t multi-task!

Check out our ‘new’ Peugeot 806 Quiksilver!

Our latest purchase, a Peugeot 806 Quiksilver

So putting talk of a UK MPV owners club aside, I wanted to tell you about my latest purchase, which has taken 5 months of searching to find – a low mileage Peugeot 806 Quiksilver. Yay! The Citroen Synergie has now been sold, after serving us brilliantly for 7 years, to be replaced with, an almost identical model!

Key factors in my selection process where: start at a lower mileage than last time (bought Synergie at 91k), must be newer, better condition, comprehensive history and most importantly, CRUISE CONTROL. I do a fair amount of motorway driving over a year, and this felt like it would make a big difference to my driving.

I set some ‘Alerts’ to email me as soon as anything came up on either EBay or Autotrader. So that when the actual car appeared online on AutoTrader, I was told immediately, and went to see it in Wales pretty much the same day. It had been PX’d, and was in very nice condition. The previous owner had fitted some aftermarket alloys which I got rid of, as on a test drive of the car they totally mucked up the car’s handling.

I’ve been driving it now for a few months, and there are some small differences between this one and the Synergie before it. The main one was that the HDI power was delivered in a slightly different way on the Citroen, and I’d gotten very used to it over the last 7 years. So I’ve had the 806 remapped after looking on a lot of forums, taking the output from 110bhp to 130bhp or thereabouts, but with a it’s torques pleasantly increased.

Low power HDI problem – solution

My brother’s Citroen Synergie has had a problem ever since first buying his 2001 plate HDI.

Although the car seemed normal to him, a quick test drive from yours truly revealed it to be severely lacking in low-down power between 1000rpm and 2500rpm. So much so that the car required a lot of revving to get it to move, which has also had the nasty effect of killing his clutch.

Well, if you’re suffering a similar problem with your 110bhp HDI engine, we may be able to offer you some hope.

We recently found a solution for this after paying for diagnosis from a main dealer. And the part to fix it only costs £17.71!

The problem was traced to something called a swirl valve diagram. It is a small part which allows the valves to all work effectively, but if it’s got a leak or split, it means you could be running on only 4 valves instead of 8. The symptoms I’ve described aren’t always picked up though, as the car doesn’t throw up a warning light for this error, will still cruise at 80mph, and may seem fine. But if you feel your car is flat as a pancake performance wise, this could be your answer.

Description and part number (from a Peugeot dealer, but should be the same for Fiat/Peugeot/Citroen) on our bill was:
P0000036394 DIAPHRAGME £17.71 EACH

Labour was roughly 1.5hrs on the job, and as he had it diagnosed and fitted by a main dealer we have no idea how it was replaced or what it looks like.

Good luck with yours, and let us know if you’ve suffered or sorted the same problem.

Ingenious Citroen Synergie camper car conversion

To welcome us into 2011, here’s a Mk1 Citroen Synergie with a fantastic 2 berth camper conversion spotted on eBay this morning, advertised for £3500 (Item number: 120665718325). Congratulations to the owner for having the foresight to imagine and complete what looks like a really professional conversion.

I’m going to contact the current owner to see if he’d write and describe how he made it, what sort of reactions he gets from owning it, and what it’s like to use a car as a camper. Watch this space.

UPDATE:

Colin the owner has replied in short, and is planning to send us a bit more info on how he made it. Here’s his reply:

Hi Tim,
Cheers for that. It’s been a great conversion for us. I will try and source some more pics for you.
Happy new year.
Regards, Colin

Here’s an excerpt from his advert:

“This is the best of both worlds for those who want to travel around as either a regular people carrier or mini campervan.

When not being used as a campervan the it has 5 seats. The three back seats are ‘rock-n-roll’ (easy locking in or removing) and two front fully rotatable seats. It can be parked anywhere without any height restrictions like most campervans.

When using it as a campervan, the rear seats are removed in one easy movement leaving ample space for a fold out table. At the very back of the van the hidden double bed is in the style of a couch that folds out again with an easy movement. I am 6ft 2 and I was always comfortably in this. The front drivers and passengers seat rotates and moves back to the dashboard giving more room.

The bed has a foam based mattress that doubles as seating when not being used. There is storage space under the bed where we keep the fold up table, very long mains hook up cable and heavy duty window covers for all the windows 360. The window covers were specifically made to fit the car and produce an almost black out effect at night which is ideal..

On the length of the right hand side has a built in gas hob ( 2 ring), electric fridge and electric pump sink and basin. The water container is 20L and the pressure is amazing. (forgot to attach tap in picture) All along the length there is great storage space for pot/pan etc to keep it out of sight.

The awning shown is set up using telescopic tent poles and no word of a lie its up in under 10 mins and trust me I am no boyscott 🙂 It attached to the open sliding doorway of the car and is secured on both side of the car. You can actually drive away leaving it in tact and close the open side with it pegged. This was fantastic when we were in France and had to nip in to the nearest village a couple of Km away to get supplies. It has 2 side windows which allows you eat and sit in or out depending on the weather.”

You know you’re hooked on MPVs when…

…you buy a 1/42 scale model of a Peugeot 806 off eBay, along with a metal plaque with a illustration of a Citroen Synergie circa 1997!

The little model made by ‘Starter’ needed a spot of super glue on arrival at the MPVcar headquarters to return it’s steering wheel to it’s rightful position. Now I’m pondering whether it could withstand fixing to my dashboard somehow, or whether it should suffice as a desktop ornament.

The plaque is surely destined for the garage wall, as a trophy.

‘MPVs a dying breed’ says Top Gear

It’s official. According to this month’s Top Gear magazine, in which journalist Vijay Pattni reviews Volkswagen’s 2010 Sharan, MPVs (multi purpose vehicles) are described as dinosaurs. A breed destined for extinction. Or a steady loss in population, for sure.

And the sales figures for MPVs within the UK confirm a decline in popularity. According to official figures, sales of MPVs had been steadily growing since 2000 – peaking in 2007. After which, a decline set in. Why? I’ve documented my thoughts below, but you may your own conclusions.

Click to access MotorIndustryFacts.pdf

Fashion no doubt plays a big part for car buyers. Is it purely fashion that leads buyers to reject an entire genre of car? As buyers were wooed by the stronger more masculine stance of a new breed of big cars – BMW X5, with the now flourishing 7 seater 4×4 market (from Volvo, BMW X5).

Historically, other genres of car have lost favour with the public. In the UK during the early 1970s, an oil shortage in the USA led to a sharp rise in fuel prices. Buyers of large and uneconomical executive saloon cars nose dived, whereas sales of small economical cars snowballed. So a whole genre or segment of vehicle can be driven down by economic factors to such an extent that buyers flatly stop buying them.

But MPVs are not gas guzzling behemoths of the dark ages of motoring. This modern breed of MPVs are incredibly fuel efficient, relatively inexpensive (particularly on the used market) and immensely adaptable. MPVs are capable of changing their stance from van to office to people carrier to weekend surf bus, all at the whim of the owner, what’s not to like?

Heres a theory: MPVs represent an area that’s just not fashionable – people carrying. I’m seeing a lot of middle class buyers now choosing the new and very stylish VW T5 Transporters, perhaps where they would have bought an MPV before. The VW brand has great power in the UK, perhaps more than is credible.

People just don’t want to own an MPV, shunning them for their size, bulk or lack of driveability. But somehow, they DO want a van.

Can a van be an MPV? Sizing up the Ford Transit Connect (Torneo)

I’m currently on the continent, on a fashionably late summer holiday – and noticed a lot more ‘civilian’ Ford Connects, Ford’s popular mini van which is most commonly seen earning a living around England’s streets for everyone from plumbers through to the Royal Mail.

I was transfixed seeing the Connect in it’s leisure wear. Alloy wheels, tinted windows and metallic paint transformed it’s humdrum workaday ‘Lego brick’ look (Ford’s stylist must have modelled the Royal Mail version on Postman Pat’s wheels) – it dare I say looked attractive.

But we don’t often see the passenger version, which can feature as many as 7 seats – and is similiar in layout to the VW Caddy Maxi, both of which are adaptable as people movers, the Caddy in particular able to haul seven humans in it’s LWB chassis.

The question for me is this: can a van be an MPV? What makes a vehicle an MPV?

Certainly if we look at Citroen’s Berlingo and Renault’s Kangoo, the answer has to be yes. They’re both (mini) vans sitting fairly and squarely in the MPV class, able to switch roles at the drop of a hat. And the 2010 Berlingo can house seven peeps, at a squeeze.

These small vans sit in a different league to their bigger siblings, the full-size Ford Transit, Vauxhall Movano & Renault’s Trafic all of which for me are vans, period.

So what do you think? For me, an MPV must be able to fulfil several criteria.

Cleaning car carpet? Take it out and hose it!

My removable floor in Synergie MPV, hit it with the jetwash!

Yesterday I enjoyed the benefit of having a completely removable floor in the Synergie, having built up a layer of construction site mud, childrens sweets, and other unknown food stuffs. In my previous cars, this was a costly exercise, as I often ended up buying new mats twice a year after the old ones became embedded with crud.

The actual Synergie MPV carpet stays perfect underneath

I talked about making my DIY floor for the car last year, and it’s still going strong. The whole carpet floor sections lift out in two parts, the front section and the rear section, and there’s a boot tray at the back which fills the floor area exactly. As the sections are foam, they weigh pretty much nothing, and respond well to a good hosing down with soapy water. Or blast it with the jetwash, as I did!

So I don’t know about you, but things like this just make sense in a box on wheels which is used a lot by dirty humans. It’s the utilitarian approach. Why don’t all cars have the ability to do this? It’s by far the most practical solution I’ve ever had. And back in place, it looks great. Oh, and for the record, mileage stands at 145,122 today – still going strong.

Another use for removeable MPV seats

If like us your MPV doesn’t feature fold-flat sears, and you have to physically remove the seats, it’s not all bad news. Our Citroen allows us to take out all 5 seats, which still have the ability to stand upright and be used as real seats. So I set up this Top Gear style seating arrangement to make a little home cinema area for a kids party – needless to say, the kids loved it.

A bonus of removing all those heavy seats is that the MPV now feels like you’ve added 20bhp!

Top 5 MPVs in the UK

What do you think are the top 5 best selling MPVs? French? German? Well, using the car industries fact gatherers for 2010, the winners were:

1. Ford SMax
2. Ford CMax
3. Ford Galaxy
4. VW Touran
5. Vauxhall Zafira

Actual MPV sales are down in 2010, but it’s the same for pretty much all segments of the car market.

Installing an in-car DVD player, the cheap way

Our 10″ In-car DVD player arrived with possibly the most useless holder case you can imagine. It’s made of canvas material, with a semi rigid backing. And it flaps around not holding anything very helpfully at all. Here’s my budget solution!

It’s simply one of those extra long bendy hold-anything foam tie ‘twistys’, available from tack stores or hardware shops. Priced around £4, they’ll allow you to bend a bracket of almost any shape, and although won’t give you that factory installed look, will allow you supreme flexibility for almost no money.

Go on, give it a try. Failing that, the Synergie has 2 folding aircraft-style tables behind the front seats for passengers. So I’m also considering using Extra-strong Velcro for my next DVD player fitting solution.

Making a Stealth Camper/Campercar

Tonight I’ve made my first attempt at creating a campercar. Yes yes, it doesn’t sound right, I know. But think about it. If theres only one or two of you, and you want to occassionally stay overnight for the surf, or for a photo opportunity, having a true multi-purpose car makes a lot of sense. You get all the benefits of running a lighter vehicle, easier parking than a van, easy on the wallet, low profile, cheap mpg, cheap to run, cheap toll crossings, and can wave goodbye to that rusty old camper that you ‘only ever slept in once last year’.

So what do you think? Basically, it’s my Synergie MPV, running with the seats swivelled round, and one middle row seat with the table, a Sunncamp self-inflating mattress in matching grey, Tesco grey fleece sleeping bag, gas stove with kettle, and various food stuffs hidden in the pockets at the rear of the car, like John West tuna meals, cereal bars, long life stuff. There’s two 2 litre water bottles in the sliding door pockets, and a secret wee bottle for those awkward middle of the night moments. I’ve also bought 3 large Tesco reflective sun blinds, both for privacy and for heat retention, which sucker on to the windows. But ideally I’d like to find a UK source for the base shiney material, I think it’s called reflectix, so I can make up some made to measure window blinds. One UK source is Self Build Motor Caravan Club who are advertising camper curtains and window screens for home-made campers.

Now, I just need to pluck up the courage to sleep in my car, and I can feedback whether my plan is a winner. Or not! Campercar. MPV sleeper. Stealth Camper. Gotta be a name for it.

Keeping it in the family

Guess what? I was pleased to see our friends from Exeter buy a Synergie on
my recommendation in 2008, but even better news this week is that my brother’s taken the plunge and bought a 2000 model HDi Citroen Synergie. It’s up on miles at 150k, but I feel confident enough in these cars to predict a long and happy ownership. Just keep changing that oil!

I’ll email him and see if he’ll write a few words around why they chose the Synergie over other 7 seaters like a Bongo, Vauxhall Zafira, Ford Galaxy or Mazda5, and what it’s like to go from an estate car to an MPV.

Ubër high mileage MPV covered 400,000 miles

Mega mileage 270,000 MPV

Browsing Ebay tonight I came across a mileage which made me chuckle. Ok, I’ve seen cars with higher miles. But MPVs with proper ‘Astro miles’, you know, been-to-the-moon-and-back miles aren’t overly common. Those sort of miles are normally the provision of sales reps in Ford Mondeos, Lagunas and ex fleet Mercedes taxis.

So I was mighty impressed to see one Peugeot 806 MPV in Farham, Surrey with a superb 270,000 miles on the clock. The owner mentions the cars done ‘mainly motorway miles’, which you’d hope is true! A new clutch and cambelt have been replaced, theres working cruise control and a current MOT too. OK theres only one photo of the car, and how many children have puked up over those 270 big ones? But it’s currently hovering at £100 with only 1 bid, it’s ready to drive away, and will hopefully serve someone very well – perhaps a first time taxi driver with little to spend?

Joking aside, those of us with HDI common rail engines should feel slightly comforted by this ubër high mileage though. It’s reassuring to know the engine is as reliable as hoped. I’m covering 10,000 miles per year – so I’ve got a way to go to beat this distance!

Anyone else got a high mileage MPV out there? Driven your 7 seater round the world several times? HDI or otherwise? I believe the Peugeot 1.9TD engine is capable of racking up an impressive mileage too. Let us all know via the comments button below.

Update: Four hundred thousand mile MPV reaches even higher!
Well this is even more like it guys. Spotted this AM on eBay cars currently with no bids and a starting price of £575.00 is a Synergie with a mileage of, wait for it, 389,000 miles! I must admit, I’d have been sorely tempted to run it for just the last 1500 miles to see that magic 400,000. I emailed the owner to see if he wanted to add anything from his own point of view, and his reply reads:

“Well, I’m a big fan of these vehicles too, previously had a Fiat Ulysee and a Peugeot 806, all diesels, sold both of those with 250000+ on the clock!! You do get to know what’s going to go and what the dodgy sounds mean, certainly buillt to last, not like the C8’s and 807’s which are awful, in my opinion!!”

Making a table for our MPV

Our MPV camper table turns our humble MPV into a mobile office or weekend van

Now I know you’ll be thinking ‘A table in a people carrier? You’re kidding, right?’ Well no, it’s serious, and it’s all part of my masterplan to turn our MPV into a truly multi-purpose work-rest-play vehicle.

You see I use my MPV for work during the week, where it has to double as both load carrier, mobile office and client transport (I remove 3 of the 7 seats most of the time). A table makes a lot of sense when you want to do what I do in my car! I have to work on a laptop, and I mean for up to a couple of hours, comfortably! I don’t want to sit with it low down on my lap. And its ideal when you want to have some food, and not just shove stuff in your cakehole and drive off. I mean actually brew up a cuppa, heat some soup, butter bread etc.

So I utilised a good friend during the times he wasn’t busy running his own Travel Health Consultancy and we set to measuring, cutting, planing and ordering legs for what must be one of the very few MPV folding tables in existance.

A local spraying and powder coating firm charged a small fortune spraying the MDF to match the interior, but most of the cost was absorbed by the pricey paint matching service, which cost £50 alone. Next time I’d just say ‘any colour you’ve got in stock please!’

Said friend made some brackets which are screwed into the table underneath and hook down the window channel. It’s not uber stable, but it stayed firm with my Apple Macbook Pro connected to a new 1000W inverter on top whilst I drove round the city centre for 45 minutes yesterday.

I found and bought the folding table leg from the Caravan Store Online for roughly £14.00, and it’s excellent; better than expected with a handy little catch to release the leg into it’s folded flat position. We cut it to 22″ to fit in the Synergie.

Office on wheels: MPV with new table for working away from studio

Where have all the MPVs gone?

I’m beginning some research, or at least planning to begin searching whether car manufacturers (globally) are producing a genuinely practical do-it-all recreational vehicle, in a similiar vein as the wonderfully thought out Synergie heralded here.

It was an article I read here on Perry’s website that got me thinking. Are today’s MPVs really worthy of the title Multiple Purpose Vehicle?
http://www.perrys.co.uk/car-news/articles/2010/04/top-ten-mpvs-1078.php

Niche markets are generally a no-go for the big car makers; we all understand that to remain profitable they must sell in volume – any quirky concepts that vary from what is percieved as a normal vehicle represent risk, and therefore remain as concepts.

Buyers looking for something a bit out of the ordinary are catered for by a small industry (in the UK at least) of custom interior and exterior Coachwork specialists, who for a price will bedeck your vehicle with an expanding roof, a hard modular floor with sliding ‘rock and roll’ bed, even a kitchen sink. They do a wonderful job, but there are negatives. The final vehicle price once converted into a camper or dayvan can soar in excess of £30,000. The vehicle height can exceed the maximum height permitted in many city car parks. The vehicles can feel ‘overburdoned’ with luxuries, many of which make the interior seem more like a prissy show home and unsuitable for the knocks and bangs of regular family use. And one of the biggest issues with interior conversions are the common loss of the ability to carry any more than 4-5 people – where’s a big cars usefulness as everyday transport if you can only ever carry 4 people?

I spent a little time browsing our local car dealers, which included some van manufacturers as well. Taking our Citroen Synergie as the benchmark, I quickly discovered how many current cars and vans are missing the basic features I now take for granted. Yes, sliding doors are firmly ‘in’ now, the public have accepted them as beneficial in tight spaces, and they’re even sprouting onto some city cars. But I couldn’t find anything with a pair of front swivel seats on a trip round Renault, Peugeot, Citroen, Ford, Nissan, or Suzuki. Volkswagen had swivel passenger front seats on their stunning show home on wheels T5 California, and some vans as well, as did Mercedes. But harder still was finding something with swivel seats, 5 removable rear seats, a 750-800 mile tank range, capable of 40-50mpg, and most importantly a flat floor.

I did find Volkswagen’s Caddy Maxi interesting, if not a little pricey on the used market. They’re still fetching upwards of £11k at present.

Essentially the kind of use where the Synergie shines is probably suitable for the majority of UK families. It’s perfect for day trips: the Synergies wide opening doors, a boot which makes a huge shaded cover and sliding doors mean it’s great for arriving somewhere and all piling out. We keep a stove in the back, along with a tiny portable loo for kids.

So to sum up, as far as I can see, the current market of MPVs (new 2010 Ford S-Max, Mazda 5 et al) and compact MPVs (Peugeot 5008, Ford C-Max) are getting generally smaller inside with narrower, lower body shapes, and despite being cleverly designed, are no longer featuring flat floors, tough surfaces, and swivel seats, but are chasing after ever-more stylish swoopy (impractical) exteriors which constrict the interior space. So buy a Synergie or 806 now, perhaps the last of the true multi purpose vehicles?

Cheap ‘campervan’ floor for your MPV

Flat floor with new hard surface

We’ve finally found an economic solution to one of the only downsides to having such a wonderfully large walk-thru floor in the Citroen Synergie range. And it will probably work for similiar cars & dayvans such as the VW Sharan, as well as the longer Peugeot 807, Ulysse mkII & the C8.

The problem
Normal car mats just can’t possibly protect the wide open walk ways in our car. The OE items wear quickly, & if you remove some seats & run the car as a day van, what’s needed is a whole protective floor, as seen in various campervans & utility vehicles. We wanted something that was easily removable but tough enough to take constant footfall from muddy users. Oh, and it must be easy to clean.

I got a quote to have a custom horsebox manufacturer fit a hard floor, with slots to allow the seats to be fitted. It was scarey. So, I started looking around for large industrial sheets of thin rubber or foam. And then a chance trip to Mole Valley Farmers depot brought me a relatively cheap solution – cattle ramp protectors. Costing £22 per mat, I calculated I’d need two, one almost fitted the length of the main part of the car, with a second needed to fit out the front of the car.

Fitting it myself

Side of Synergie - swivel seats

Now I’m not particularly proud of how I cut the mats to fit – instead of carefully measuring, and because of my impatience I did it with a Stanley knife almost by eye. Luckily it’s all worked out! I cut holes where the seats slot in, and my best suggestion is to cut them but leave one end still attached so they fold up when required, and they’re always there when you need them, as opposed to being left open to catch dirt.

So this is a great solution for us until I can think of something even better. The grey carpets are now protected from damage, from mud & water, I don’t mind throwing bikes and kids in at the weekend knowing that I can now sweep or brush the interior floor before clients see it on a Monday back on the road.

Synergie - doors open, flat floor

In-car DAB radio & iPhone installed

After an excessive amount of deliberation over various in-car entertainment solutions that weave together the possibilty of enjoying our collection of iPods, iPhones & portable DVD players in one usable package, we’ve purchased a rather exotic Sony CDX-DAB6650 DAB CD stereo from our local Halfords (who remain excellent at returning & refunding items if we aren’t totally totally happy, and remember to keep all the packaging).

Despite having only basic electrical skills, I coped with fitting the DAB unit myself, and it’s actually quite a simple installation into the Citroen Synergie (& variants) thanks to a large ‘airy’ dashboard with plenty of hiding spaces for AUX cables & 3.5mm jack behind the main instrument binnacle. Love the natty little remote control too.

iPhone friendly
Our perfect iPhone solution in combination with this DAB radio, was to run the iPhone through the headphone socket using a high quality Belkin stereo cable into the back of the head unit, meaning I can control the iPhone easily on the move with it mounted on the Halfords universal PDA screen mount. A call comes in, the stereo fades down to mute, and the iPhone then puts the call through either my speakers, or straight to my o2 bluetooth earpiece. This, for us, is the best all round solution for business use on the move, and for family weekend usage.

There’s a long user review here if you’re interested – and as the unit has been in production since 2006 I considered it ‘well-tested’ by now.

Citroen’s original Evasion press release

 

Citroen's own range of images from a 1995 brochure

Interesting reading from the Citroen Connection in Canada – Citroen’s own press release that heralded the launch of the Synergie (Evasion was it’s title throughout the rest of the Europe). Here’s a little excerpt:

“An exciting motoring concept, Synergie gives you the freedom to do what you please and go where you please, whenever it pleases you.

Change your plans, and the Synergie’s accommodation plan changes too. An ingenious modular seating system with 52 separate anchorage points allow you to make innumerable variations in its interior layout. In fact, the seats can be reorganised or even removed entirely in minutes. There’s a choice of either five or seven places on LX and SX models or six places on the VSX.”