The Keeper - Citroën CX

Vacationing in Aruba, Dan McCarville did what he usually did while reveling in the island paradise: Scan the craigslist ads in upstate New York for old cars. He was a man obsessed, as he forever had been; it just wasn't always with cars.

Few of us come to cars late in life; there's almost always a spark early on, somewhere. We're not sure we'd call it a spark in young Dan's life, but there were cars, if more by necessity than choice. He says his father could often be found tinkering with a car, but only because he had to keep it running, and his boy was drafted in as an assistant. "At 9 years old, I was in the garage in the dead of winter doing a valve job on a Studebaker," Dan said; so it's little surprise he allowed cars to pass out of his life for many years.

What he found instead was work. Seven days a week, he burrowed deep into the corporate world, putting aside childhood pursuits and dreams of everything but success in business. "I was a workaholic at a national company," he said. "I never worked on a car until 1990."

What happened in 1990 was that Dan had a change of heart. Reexamining his priorities, it was time for less job, more family, and more fun. Among other things, that meant a 1965 VW 21-window bus. Dan soon became a regular sight at Connecticut and other regional VW meets, his immaculately restored van taking first place every time it was shown; 21 firsts in 21 shows, as he relates it, after which he was ready for his next project. "I always end up getting tired of cars and selling them," he said, and through the Nineties and Oughts, 40 more cars came and went, "Ranging from Land Rovers to Alfas and Fiats...all of which I restored." The eclectic list includes a single American car, a 1960 Ford; the rest are generally oddballs: a 1969 Subaru 360 (the long "wagon" version); a V-4 Saab; 1963 Mercedes-Benz 190D. "Once I got started, I just didn't stop!" he said. Even his "new" cars are weird, including a daily-driver Cadillac Catera, which he says may be the only one remaining on which everything works; and a Mercedes 560 SL convertible, "my twice-a-year cruising car."

So while he had never owned a Citroën before, when he saw the ad for a 1989 CXA, he wasn't daunted by the idea of an obscure model. He called the seller from Aruba, and flew back the next day to take a look, but his first question wasn't so much "how is it," but "what is it?" Dan's car looks like a Citroën CX, but no such thing was sold here. In fact, Citroën never sold something called the CXA, anywhere--but CX Automotive did.

Together with Georgia's CINA, these importers brought in somewhere between 400 and 1,000 assorted Citroëns in the Eighties and early Nineties, apparently mostly CXs, not only without any support from the parent company, but over their active resistance. The idea was that there was still demand for the cars in America, but the model had been forced out of the country years before by a ban on height-adjustable suspension. Citroën never brought it back when President Ronald Reagan lifted the ban, but if it wasn't economically feasible for a massive automaker, maybe a cottage industry could do it.

Maybe. CXA attempted to buy the cars wholesale from Citroën, but they weren't biting, and legend has it that they had to pay retail for them from European dealers, then do their best to federalize them at a facility at Oisterwijk, the Netherlands (they never did achieve California certification). As a result, you were looking at about $50,000 for the top-of-the-line Prestige, competitive with a Jaguar XJ6 Vanden Plas or Mercedes-Benz 300 SE sedan. You could also have had the new Saab 9000CD, with vaguely similar notchback styling, for $30,000.

Given the potential liability, we're not surprised that Peugeot/Citroën was uncooperative, and that they complained loudly and publicly. Legal action followed, but there was little they could do to stop CXA from buying cars retail. However, they could force them to remove the Citroën name, not just from the car, but the registration--this is, in fact, not a Citroën, but a CxAuto Prestige, complete with five-year, 50,000-mile warranty.

"Prestige," for the trim level, is, in fact, all it says on the car. If you know Citroëns, it's easily identifiable; if not, it's one you're not going to guess. The wheelbase is an incredibly long 122 inches, CXA advertising it as the longest for sale in America, pipping even the mighty Cadillac Brougham by half an inch (but apparently presuming their customers weren't cross-shopping a six-figure Rolls-Royce Silver Spur, which had a couple of inches on the CXA). With the body-color grille, restrained trim and rear wheelcovers, it's an imposing sight. Dan shows it and says, "The Mustangs and Corvettes, people look at them, but they're four or five deep around this car." And that's just the exterior.

The leather "sofas" inside, as Dan calls them, are the contact point for "the most comfortable ride I've ever experienced." Citroën's venerable hydropneumatic suspension seems to have had the kinks worked out by then--Dan put 6,000 miles on the car in the first season of driving, and hasn't touched it. He says that's a bit of a leap of faith, given that the steering and brakes operate on the same hydraulic system. The apocryphal story is that if it fails, "you lose your brakes and you crash to the ground. It makes for an interesting afternoon."

This car has been the furthest thing from unreliable, though. Visiting the seller the day after flying back from vacation, he found it non-running, although no one could tell him why. It had been sitting for at least six years, and even with only 58,000 miles, it could have been anything. After extended rounds of haggling, Dan finally made a deal and towed it home. He drained and refilled all the fluids, and put in a new battery. Up it started. "What happened next was all the oil came running out of it," he said, a rear seal succumbing to age and disuse.

Dan took the CXA to Beek's Auto in Gardiner, New York, where they pulled the engine and replaced the seal, and that was about it. "There are a fair number around, but not so many in this condition," he said. The A/C blew cold air even while the oil poured out, and the only interior work was replacing a collapsed headliner.

"Being a brave guy, I picked it up at Beek's on Friday and drove to Boston on Saturday," some 200 miles, he said. "It went without a flaw...the scariest part was when people popped out of their sunroof to take a picture." He says that first drive was the scariest, not because of the unproven car but more from the CXA's ultra-sensitive variable power steering and variable assist brakes. Citroën intended the experience to be low effort, and neither brakes nor steering requires more than the lightest of touches. "The Citroën, you don't steer it, you guide it down the road. It corners very nicely, too. It doesn't lean; it has no shocks and springs. You don't slide out of your leather seat when you take a corner."

For him, though, the real selling point was the suspension. "My wife loves driving it, and it's the most comfortable ride I've ever experienced." He says the only thing comparable was a friend's mid-Seventies Rolls-Royce: "I often think about driving that, but this is such an unusual-looking car. But it's so reliable, and being an '89, totally roadworthy."

There has been one incident in Dan's brief year of ownership, but it wasn't the car's fault. Struggling with a recalcitrant key one day, thanks to the ignition interlock, he accidentally popped it into neutral before he started it. No hydraulic pressure meant no brakes, and by the time he grabbed the emergency brake, "I was parked four inches under the back of a Ford F-250." Dan had restored dozens of cars by then, but this one was different, and he sent it out to have the hood done. "I didn't do that; it was too nice a car to let an amateur do."

Owner, Dan McCarville

At shows, "I love to go and talk to people about cars--my cars never have a 'do not touch' sticker on them," said Dan. "I let the kids climb on them," and his dogs travel in the back. But not this one: "I've owned 40-plus cars, but I always get bored," he said. "This is my first keeper, ever."