3 Reasons Not to Hate the French Cars.
3 Reasons not to hate French cars.
I spend a lot of time reading comments on the internet that express the hate that some people have against French cars. So I think I need to clarify some things about them, to show you that they deserve some love.
I’m not writing this as a propaganda for the French brands nor because I’m a pro-French things, but because I’m a true car lover, and as a car guy, you may understand me when I say that hating a car brand just because you don’t like the car’s design or nationality is plain stupidity, we all have our own tastes. So here are some things you should know about me: first of all, yes, I’m French. Secondly, I love cars in general: I drive a 2005 Citroën Xsara Break (diesel, 90hp, 100k miles), and my two dream cars are a 1970 Dodge Charger R/T and a 1995 Nissan Skyline R33 GT-R. And Finally, this is my first article, and English isn’t my native language (obviously), so please, be kind.
But let’s not make you wait any longer, here are my pros :
1. The place of France in the Automotive History
Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot, a French inventor, is widely credited with building the first full-scale, self-propelled mechanical vehicle or automobile in about 1769; he created a steam-powered tricycle called "Le Fardier de Cugnot". Father Ferdinand Verbiest, a Belgian Flemish Jesuit missioner, may have been the first to design and most likely to build, around 1672, "a steam-powered vehicle" but that was too small to carry a driver or passengers.
In November 1881, French inventor Gustave Trouvé demonstrated a working three-wheeled car powered by electricity at the International Exposition of Electricity, Paris.
The first car to pass the 100km/h bar was the French electric car "La Jamais contente" (literally translated as "the never satisfied").
The outlines of the current car as we know it are plotted in 1922 with Lancia Lambda and the self-supporting body and independent front suspension, in 1934 with Chrysler Airflow which introduced the aerodynamics, Citroen and the development of the Traction Avant (FWD) in 1934, and the introduction of disc brakes on the DS in 1955, or by Porsche and the box bevel gear synchronizers of the 356 and finally in 1959 with the Mini Morris with the first engine in transverse position.
2. They are great cars
This is one of the most untrue stereotype about the French Brands: "They aren’t reliable". My very first car was a 1997 Citroën ZX Break. Not very beautiful, but it had its charm. I sold it a few months ago for 250€, with +330k kms (more than 206k miles) and some bumps and scrathes (was involved in 4 small crashes, not by me and never in fault). Electric windows? Still working! Anti-start code device? Tired but working too! The lights on the dashboard were a bit too feeble, but she was still ready to eat the road for a long time.
And that’s what all French cars are, cars. by this, I mean that they are great cars that won’t fail you. Of course there are some that are worse than the others, but it’s the same for every car brand.
Indeed, I won’t deny that at some point of their own History, some French brands had a bad time. It happens, but sadly as we say "Il faut plusieurs générations pour bâtir une réputation, mais il n’en faut qu’une pour la détruire", which means "you need several generations to build a reputation, but only one to destroy it".
Nowadays French car brands are way better than you could think, so good that other brands uses engines, bodies or entire cars for their own product range (for example, Mercedes uses DCI engines from Renault for their A, B and C classes or the body of the Renault Kangoo for their compact utility vehicle Citane).
And indeed, don’t mix Quality and Reliability.
3. Their Racing Gene.
A little quote of Forza Motorsport 3, during the loading screen, once said "Peugeot is the only manufacturer that can brag about having victory records in three different centuries". That is actually true. Not only as a car maker of course, but that sentence still says something.
You know them : Bugatti, Alpine, Renault, Citroën, Peugeot, Matra,… Rally, Formula One, LeMans Endurance series, BTCC, WTCC, Pikes Peak,…
Every French Car Brand has won in Racing. And every french sports car has it in its genes. They even said in right here, on CT! "If you’re a keen driver, you need to get the RCZ R. Trust me. Every aspect of the way it drives when you’re kicking its head in is leaps and bounds ahead of the TT, and I guarantee after a hoon in both, the Peugeot’s the one that’ll put the bigger smile on your face. Badge snobs be damned." Want to know more about that? It’s here : link text .
Ever drove a 205 1.9 GTI? A test driver once said "You’ll need racing skills to master this monster". 130hp only? Yup, but power never ment performance. You know what someone said : "If you’re not fast with 90hp, 900 won’t help you". That’s what is all about French sports car, power isn’t necessary if you have the right chassis.
That is all I can say for now, without making an extra-long article that would be too consistent to be readable. So if you’ve reached this point, thank you for the time you spent reading this and I hope that you’re more likely to not spread the hate, for our Frenchies and for all cars in general, because after all, it’s just a matter of opinion.
Little bonus : I want to clarify something that seems to be a good starting point of hate about French cars : the Volvo vs Modus Crash test. Yes, old Volvo’s are known for being Tanks. No, the engine hasn’t been removed for the crash test, it’s just that it is not in a transversal position but in a longitudinal position, so when the two car went on a 3/4 front collision, the engine was moved on left-side of the engine bay. No, the Volvo isn’t safer than a Modus. Why? Because the Volvo was engineered during an era when Euro N-CAP wasn’t there to rule the safety of the cars. So yes it was a tank back then, but now it isn’t anymore. Sorry guys.
And for the video where you can see a red Volvo wagon hit some old cars on a scrapyard, you can clearly see that they are using things as ramps to avoid the high strength parts of the cars that are normally collided during a crash, this resulting on a heavier car crashing with it’s own strengthened body parts on cars-parts where it’s not supposed to crash. So it may appear that the Volvo is a true tank, but it’s just tricks and lies. Sorry again guys…
Internet traditions must be respected, Sorry for the long post so here is a potato-car :
Comments
I loved the Peugeot 406 I owned while I lived in Denmark. It was a solid, reliable car. It wasn’t fast, but it handled well and the 5spd gearbox was very smooth.
Peugeot tried to sell cars in the US, but they had a very small dealer network and few independent shops had a clue when it came to basic repairs. As a result French cars got an undeserved reputation for unreliability.
Renault probably sold cars for the longest period in the US. They spent years and who knows how much money to get us to pronounce Renault properly.( Americans had a habit of pronouncing the "t") Then after that they went and named their new coupe Fuego, the Spanish word for fire.
French names are very hard to pronounce in general, for non French people, so it isn’t really surprising ! And some French car may be difficult to repair, I recon that. But once you know how to do it, it’s quite easy. But maybe that’s why we don’t have a lot of French cars in american games, because they don’t know that they exists x)
Those look like squash/melon cars to me, or maybe a sweet potato and a squash.
A sweet potato yeah, but still a potato :P
Yay, French cars are decent, I always thought that. Of course, I think that a lot of them are crap, but for every 20 or so crappy cars that come out of France, there is a superior one. And even bad french cars are interesting sometimes.Btw, one of my favorite french cars ever in anime.
Haha ! That anime thing is excellent ! Which anime is it ? And yes, the 1980- 2000 era was really bad for French brands and for Renault in particular (lasted until 2008), so there is a lot of crappy cars from them during this period. But the general quality of French cars improved during time, nowadays ones are very good ;)
Over Rev ! I like this manga !
In some Bulgarian (and other Balkan countries) Auto repair garages, there are joke signs that says "Пичка, мачка и борче не правим" which in direct means "Pusy, cat and pine we don’t repair"
This stems from the emblems, and because french cars are more difficult to repair in contrast from the other cars:
Pusy - Renaut
Cat - Peugeot
Pine - Citroen
Never had problems while fixing mine, but I don’t know all the car, and I know that some were badly engineered for repairing. Nothing is perfect.
*мачка, пичка и елхичка. Get your facts straight :D altho I love french cars and their charm and quirckyness and their history. All of our cars in my family are french and with good maintanence comes long milage. Never has anything bad happened to our "Machki", "Pichki" nor the "Elhichki". Looking forward to a peugout 406 coupe in a few months for my first car . Cheers France, thank you for the cars :)
For us, Renault emblem looks like a jack. Welle played for the pu$sy idea :)
Merci ! Tu viens d’exposer exactement ce que je pense et aussi ce que mon père essaie de faire comprendre à beaucoup de gens :)
De rien, ce fut un plaisir. Et c’est compliqué de faire comprendre ca aux gens, ils doivent voir par eux même. J’ai un collègue qui avait un VW Golf TDI mk6 (110ch) et lorsqu’il a emprunté un des C4 hdi (110) de l’entreprise, il a été surpris par la qualité et les performances de l’auto, lui qui pensait que ca serait mauvais il a changé d’avis ! Maintenant a chaque fois qu’il emprunte un française il vient me voir étonné et me raconte a quel point elles sont bien. Il a même vendu son Golf pour acheter un Scénic de 2012 !
THANKS YOU!
Great post but I think "la jamais contente" was actually a belgian car
You are right, it was built by the belgian Jenatzy. The record however was made in Achères, France. My bad !
Stone me to death, but french cars aren’t any good. Yeah, they used to be, when they were square and had reliable engines and electronics, back in 80’s to early 90’s. But what came next is absolute rubbish. Engines that won’t make over 70 thousand kms (been there seen that, e.g. the 2.2 dci they put in every other Renault since around 2000), electronics that constantly fail (Working sunroof or tire pressure sensor? Naaaaaaah, don’t be silly and here you go, I’ll thurn the bloody front lights off for you!) Oh and the interiors - the wierd half-rotating steering wheels, the dashboard on the passenger’s side? What the hell? And last but not least: the design as a whole. When they went stopped making the edges sharp, it all went bonkers. Anyways, VW isn’t any better since 2005 or 2007 or so, but that’s a whole another story.. The French started making rubbish cars first. And Yeah, somebody mentioned Top Gear - they say basically what I just said, so.. (And btw, all the examples you use to defend them are those old square cars that still run because they actually weren’t rubbish, but anything newer is. Hawgh.)
I won’t "stone you to death", just tell you to read the comments and see what I said. You only talk about Renault and the era they were plain rubbish. Nowadays cars are far better than what you say, at least as good as VW’s concurrent models. That may be an unpopular opinion but this is the truth. The design is a matter of taste. German elitism is a thing from the past, sorry mate, not only for French cars but for all the cars brands around the world.
3 reasons not to hate them, 300 to do…
Where I’m from french cars don’t last very long because they corode from the salt that is on the roads in winter. And they don’t look that good in my eyes.
The look is a matter of opinion. The rust because of the salt is surprising as the cars are treated against that. Maybe not enough for the quantity of snow found in your country, but in here we don’t have that problem :