Les Voitures Françaises c'est de la M****

Oh dear, the French car manufacturers are all suffering a dip in sales, and it's not due to the ever pervading stench of Garlic, the Exchange rate or even the new French Government. Sad

No, French cars are just shit, simple as that. Mad

You may wish to don your Rose tints, and fondly reminisce over such apparent lovelies such as the sleek Citroen DS, the stoic Peugeot 504 Family Estate, or the trendy Renault 5, but a swift reality check paints a different picture, one painted on a backdrop of large denomination banknotes with leaked hydraulic fluid, and sprinkled liberally with ferrous oxide. Crying or Very sad

There are few French cars ever made which posessed a reasonable combination of Dynamics, Reliability, Looks and Longevity. Embarassed

The pretty ones inevitably either rusted away at warp speed, or bankrupted the poor bastards who bought them in the first place with bill after bill for horrific major failures. Point

Reliable ones were horrid to look at and drive, thus negating their one good feature, after all, A Renault 16TL looked like a slice of Edam, and handled like all the suspension work was done by the Shopping trolley people and made with rubber. Honestly, understeer was not only offered in extremely generous measure, but was accompanied by the sort of noise a very small female Pig makes when painted Grey and thrown into the Elephant enclosure at the local Zoo.

The ones which seemed to last longest, a fact soon picked up by Turkish Taxi drivers, were thirsty, had more spares thrown into the sturdy chassis than Trigs broom, and looked hateful, almost like a stretched Renault 16TL..... Sick

Some were really fucking bad, and simultaneously rusted, broke down AND understeered, a feat which even Lada failed to match even when they used defunct FIAT designs from the 60's...... Embarassed

Latest models enjoy fairly competetive dynamics, and like all modern cars seem not to corrode in any obvious fashion, but attract the worst sort of owners....

Look at 'em.... Citroen Saxo's, or any small French car is inevitably going to be driven by a downright fucking pleb, while only the most tasteless Reps would be seen in the larger pieces of wheeled shit, and at the top end, there are always a few eccentric lunatics around stupid enough to buy scary things like the Citroen C6, which costs around £38,000 (Thats staggeringly as much as a BMW 540SEi) and depreciates by approximately 50% per day for it's entire life....which isn't that long either..... Disappointed

Even at the pinnacle of historic French motorised legends, we are looking at horribly flawed gems, such as the fragile Peugeot 205 GTi 1.9 which chomped it's way through engines and gearboxes at an interesting rate, while bits dropped off them just as quick, the Renault 5 which corroded nearly as fast as an Alfa-Romeo Taxi, in a Salt mine, and the Citroen SM which proved even a Maserati engine didn't make a bad car good.

Stick to cooking mes amies