French cars.Hmmm...

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Blayney said:

Really? Neither issue left me stranded as the coil pack revealed itself with a slight hesitation when accelerating under load that eventually developed into a misfire - then was rectified. ABS unit didn't exactly stop the car working. I know we on PH are enlightened but the general public perception is that French and over 100k miles must mean it never starts... and it's simply not true! That car is thrashed on an almost daily basis and just keeps going...

I don't think 2 things really warrants the term "list".

Front springs on something the size of a bag of sugar would put me off and as soon as things got "electrical"....well, I'm out

I have probably been around Japanese cars and old Volvo's for too long.

My old 850 which still looks almost mint both inside and out and under the bonnet (MOT tester couldn't find any surface rust anywhere) is now on a neighbours drive sat on 160k. He's covered around 20k of that already and has so far changed.... a bush.

It's 20 years old. It looks two years old. It drives like it is two years old. Almost everything on it is original with all the old paperwork only showing service items and iirc, an alternator.

My parents old 24 year old Toyota (owned from new) had a few bulbs in its life and nothing else.

That's probably why tales of 116k, on something not very old and having to spend what must equate to several hundred pounds on problems, would put me off.

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PorkRind said:

Clio 172 from 24 to 212k. Didn't miss a heartbeat and the only costs were service Items. More reliable than my audi. Horses for courses isn't it?!

Certainly is. I said earlier in this thread I rarely see Clio's with bonnets up.

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Butter Face said:

Auto express carry out a survey every year where they actually ask people who buy the cars (you know, the people from whom the feedback is actually relevant) and they allow anyone to look at it.

It's here http://www.autoexpress.co.uk/best-cars/driver-powe...

What's that? A Renault in 2nd place, and one in 3rd? The worlds gone mad. And one of them is all electric it must be a fix, right? and there's 5 Renaults (inc Dacia) in the top 20.

Are you not talking individual cars there, though? I had to Google both of them just to see what they were and I have never seen a ZOE.

When you click on the 'reliability' tab, you have to scroll down and down and down some more before anything French appears. They are a long way down on that list.

Nothing French appears on the 'Warranty Direct’s 50,000 live policies' reliability survey until position 13 or worse, either.

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HustleRussell said:

France. A nation with one of the longest and most prestigious histories in car making. Reknowned for constant and significant innovation in defiance of convention, in both technology and design. Always daring to be different. A rich and successful pedigree in all kinds of motorsport.

The world of petrolhead is unarguably richer for it's wealth of interesting French metal.

Frankly I'd be surprised if anybody who has a clue would disagree with that.

100% agree with all of that.

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Are we looking at different lists?

Dacia is 15th on mine.

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Flooble said:

Butter Face said:

So the point is that surveys and reports are all bks and no different to Bob down the pub who's Great auntie flo had a Peugeot in 1978 that broke down a few times and as such he says all French cars are crap.

I'm actually pretty happy with that resolution.

Pretty much. Although the autoexpress results still carry less weight than the warranty list results imho.

Anyway, this thread isn't about lists or Bob down the pub, it's about how many French cars I see on the hard shoulder and the answer, after all this time, is quite a lot. Most are 4 to 5 years old plus and I simply posted to ask why that is. VW's may be much, much worse, but I rarely see them.

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I jokingly thought "Bet it's French" again earlier when the fire trucks fought their way through the A13 gridlock..

A short time later...