This is more of a guide as to some of the strange quirks that I have discovered in my short time of ownership that you may not know as well as some of those 'I wish I'd known that before' nuggets of information. Please bear in mind that a LOT of this is subjective and your opinions may well vary from my own....with that said, on with the list!
1 - You are considering a car that is up to 16 years old at this point, therefore things WILL squeak, rattle, groan and generally make new and exciting noises you may never have heard on a car before!
2 - These cars were generally well equipped from the factory, with options adding to this. Personally I have auto-wipers, automatic climate control, auto lights and more. Other options included heated seats and cruise control. Decide which options are important to you when searching for a car.
3 - The front window design is terrible. If there is a single drop of water on the roof anywhere and you open the window, be assured that this will find a way inside the car and either onto your arm or your leg. You cannot do anything about this so just get ready to grin and bear it.!
4 - The boot on the 206 CC seems to have magical properties as it is both bigger and yet smaller than you may think. When the roof is up it can swallow a suprising amount of shopping/luggage. When the roof is down however, the exact opposite is true!
5 - There are no cupholders (no, the ones in the glovebox lid don't count
). I knew about this before looking/buying but I have been suprised by how much this irks me sometimes, especially after driving my wifes car where there is an abundance of them!6 - Don't rush! The 206 CC was the most successful cabriolet in Europe during it's time on sale. The second-hand market has plenty of them so it is well worth your time seeking out a good one I personally looked at 7 before finding one with a full service history, a file full of invoices (including a new clutch and gearbox still in warranty) and a rather wealthy father who had spent a ton of money on it for his rather spoiled son! It cost me 200 pounds more than the other rather tired examples i had previously seen.
7 - The 2.0 is quicker than the numbers suggest. The 0-60 time doesn't suggest anything special, and indeed you are certainly not going to set the world on fire, however in real life conditions it is certainly faster and, well, 'nippier' than i thought it was going to be. My timed 0-60 is 7.6 seconds, which isn't too shabby!
8 - There's no center console. How big a deal this is is up to you decide. The doors do have a second pocket towards the rear of the door for a bit extra storage though.
9 - The doors are bigger than you think they are. They are a lot longer than you think which can sometimes make entry/exit a bit difficult if you are parked ext to another car / pillar. If you are going to store your 206 CC in a garage this is something to bear in mind and maybe measure up before you start looking at cars.
10 - The boot doesn't open with the central looking. No, it isn't broken, yes it came from the factory like that, yes it's annoying and no, nobody has a clue why they did it like that! There is a mod that you can do to enable the central locking to also open the boot and it's posted on this forum but if it hasn't had this mod done you will need to use the key to unlock the boot every......single......goddamn.....time!!!
11 - The steering wheel can be adjusted for tilt but does not telescope.
12 - You don't get a spare wheel. Either check that the 2 cans of tyre 'slime' that came with the car are still there or buy a couple from Halfords on the way back to prevent an embarrassing call to the AA one day!
And lastly (for now!!)
13 - The 2.0 has a rather unusual tyre size of 205/45 R16. This makes buying replacements (or where I live separate summer and winter tyres ) a lot more expensive than you would expect for a car of this size. To put it into perspective, it cost me more to buy a reasonable set of winter tyres than my mother in law - and she drives a lexus RX350!!
I hope that this somewhat strange assortment of information has been of at least some use to you and if any prospective buyers have any other questions please feel free to ask and I will do my best to answer for you!
