Citroen Xsara Left Front Seat

Used front seats through South African strippers land at R1,500 to R5,900 depending on the model, the trim level and whether it is cloth or leather. Pro Citroen Spares and our supplier network hold stock. Send photographs of your existing seat rather than just the model — trim pattern and colour vary within a single model year, and matching one seat to its neighbour is the whole point.

Usually the rail catch or one side of the recliner cam has worn, and the noise appears once the foam has compressed enough to shift your weight onto the frame instead of spreading it. Lithium grease on the rails and the recliner pivot often quietens it for months and costs nothing to try. If the creak comes back quickly, the recliner mechanism itself is worn and a trim shop needs to strip it.

General wear never is, anywhere. And in practice the question rarely arises here, because most Citroens on South African roads are well past any factory cover — the local fleet is largely pre-2016. If you have one of the newer cars and the leather has split unusually early, photograph it with the mileage and raise it, but for everyone else the realistic route is a used matching seat or a retrim at a local upholsterer.

Yes. Pro Citroen Spares keeps used seats for the C3, Xsara, C3 Aircross, C5 Aircross and C5 in both cloth and leather. We match on VIN, trim colour and — importantly — on whether your car has seat heating and a side airbag in that seat, because fitting a seat with different equipment to the one it replaces leaves a warning lamp on and, in the airbag case, a system that is not doing its job.

Cloth typically goes 150,000 to 200,000 km without looking tired. Leather is the shorter-lived of the two in our climate — untreated, it starts cracking at 80,000 to 120,000 km, because UV and heat drive the plasticisers out of the hide and it goes brittle before it goes ugly. Conditioning it two or three times a year roughly doubles that, which makes it about the highest-return maintenance you can do on an interior.