Vive La France…? (Help me remove a long held Bias)

[_Rob]

Please help me either remove, or validate, a long-held but quite possibly out-of-date bias I have against brands like Renault, Peugeot, and Citroen.

I keep dismissing them through fear of reliability concerns, or general poor build quality - interior rattles in particular drive me insane. Is this in any way justified in their more modern cars (2014+ for example)?

They often make nice looking and we’ll-spec’d cars, and the second hand price is often lower than other brands (fuelling my bias, that must prove they’re not good, right..?), but I can’t bring myself to consider them.

I typically end up buying from the VAG group, BMW, etc. We did have a Nissan Qashqai as a family runaround, which I know has a lot in common these days, and had continued fuel pump problems but was otherwise fine.

Am I in any way justified here, or are modern cars from these brands worth consider alongside my usual choices?

Thanks!

[Scrump]

[georgeyboy12345]

Bad cars can be found across brands from all countries, not just French. I have had Audis, supposed high quality German cars that have worse interior rattles than Alfa Romeos I have owned.

There are also several flawed engine designs that are best avoided, again these can come from brands from any country. For example with French cars there are the 1.2 Puretechs and the 1.6 Prince engine. But also the early EA888s, EA111 from VAG, a load of the N-series engines from BMW. On the other hand there are some motors that are brilliantly reliable from France, such as the Renault D4/7F & H4B TCe and R9M dCi engines, many PSA HDI engines, etc. so it’s disingenuous to suggest that French cars are unreliable.

As with most things in life, there is no one single simple answer.

[austina35]

No your right, French cars have always been poor both in build quality and reliability. I owned one pug once and it spent more time with the bonnet up than it did taking where I needed to. Friends of mine also had issues with these French cars as well.

Stick to german engineering.

[SWoll]

austina35 said:

No your right, French cars have always been poor both in build quality and reliability. I owned one pug once and it spent more time with the bonnet up than it did taking where I needed to. Friends of mine also had issues with these French cars as well.

Stick to german engineering.

IME over 25+ years of owning cars from pretty much every large manufacturing country (German, British, French, Italian, Japanese, American) the 'German engineering" thing is a myth. Had no end of faults with new and used BMW's, Mercedes and Audis.

If you want well built and reliable, buy Japanese. It'll likely be devoid of any personality though.

[Griff74]

Sorry I can’t help change your mind, know too many people who have had issues with French cars over the years apart from the old simpler ones back in the day (Citroen AX’s, Renault 5’s and the likes) who have had many issues with French cars. Myself I had a 2002 Pug 206 D-Turbo that was 18 months old when I bought it with 15k on it, had lots of build quality issues with the interior and paint work and when I took it for it’s 3rd year service just before the warranty ran out it had a list as long as your arm wrong with it (suspension components, bearings and tensioners on the engine, gear selector stuff etc), all fixed under warranty but sold it on very quickly and replaced with a 52 plate Astra SRi 1.8 which was brilliant for 3 years (apart from a recall on the steering rack which was dealt with in less than a day by the main dealer).
My OH fell in love with a year or so old 2011 DS4 D-Sport 200thp with the whole options list thrown at it and against my better judgment I agreed to us getting it, was fine for about 12 or so months and then it started suffering various sensor failures on the engine and coolant leaks, dodgy electrics (esp the ICE system), various creaks and rattles and then the joke of trying to find the correct spec suspension spring from Citroen when one snapped, basically they couldn’t guarantee they would send us the right ones even though we had the colour codes, wouldn’t accept us to return them if wrong as they had to be ordered from France, absolute joke! In the end we found a shop on EBay who had what he thought were the right ones but would let us return them FOC if they weren’t, they were though, had them fitted and then got rid as I could see the typical French car maintenance creep about to start.

Edit, I once bought a 3 year old Abarth 500 with over 30k on it and apart from the known issue on early ones of the dodgy ‘spider cups’ on the drive shafts needing replacing before I picked it up (bought from a main dealer) it was faultless for almost 3 years and over 20k of hard driving, just normal servicing and maintenance, and that was with the SS map I had put on it as well, so in my limited experience Italian (though Polish built) cars are better than French ones.

Edited by Griff74 on Sunday 29th May 11:29

[austina35]

SWoll said:

austina35 said:

No your right, French cars have always been poor both in build quality and reliability. I owned one pug once and it spent more time with the bonnet up than it did taking where I needed to. Friends of mine also had issues with these French cars as well.

Stick to german engineering.

IME over 25+ years of owning cars from pretty much every large manufacturing country (German, British, French, Italian, Japanese, American) the 'German engineering" thing is a myth. Had no end of faults with new and used BMW's, Mercedes and Audis.

If you want well built and reliable, buy Japanese. It'll likely be devoid of any personality though.

Other than service costs, I've had no issues with my mercs or vw cars for about 15 years.

I agree with jap cars but I find them boring.

[jaydeeuk1]

French cars haven't necessarily improved over last 15 years, it's just the German manufacturers have gone downhill so French cars look improved by comparison.

Saying that, I had a c4 cactus a few years back and it was reliable - as in didn't breakdown - , other than reverse gear either worked or it made gearbox scream and bang. Dealer said it was normal, so went lexus next as soon as warranty was up.

[_Rob]

The mix of experience and responses suggest I’m not completely unfair or unjustified, but I absolutely agree with the points about specific engines or models being more or less reliable regardless of the manufacturer.

I guess I need to relax a bit and just do more research if something comes up that takes my fancy, rather than immediately write it off. It’s an emotional thing more than a practical one!

[snoopy25]

Have had a Peugeot 106 for 3 years, Citroen Saxo VTR for 12 years and a Renault Megane coupe for nearly 10 years. Nothing has gone wrong with them and the build quality has been fine.

There are good/badly made cars across all manufacturers!

[samoht]

Had a 306 for more or less a decade which was reasonable, the head gasket went but wasn't too much to repair, a rad hose failed which was inconvenient, PAS belt snapped, exhaust rusted. Over 10 years I'd categorise it as average. I don't think it was too rattly. The comfortable, composed way it resolved poorly surfaced B-roads at speed was its best trait.


To me there's a mainstream level that includes Ford, Vauxhall, Peugeot/Citroen, Renault, VW, Mercedes ('95 on), BMW, Jaguar that are all much of a muchness. Parts will fail and need fixing from time to time, but any convenient local garage can probably sort it and usually not too dear.

Above that you have most Japanese stuff which much more rarely goes wrong, best of which is Toyota. However replacement parts will tend to cost a bit more. I think modern 'Renault' Nissans may be more mainstream level of reliability; Japanese-made stuff from the 90s, and also eg 350/370Z, pretty solid tho.

Below them you have marques noted for their unsophisticated quality control such as TVR and Land Rover.


So basically, if you don't want something Japanese, then you may as well buy a French car as any other mainstream make IMO. Of course there are good and bad individual cars, and good and bad models from all makes, so worth researching any model before purchase.

[CG2020UK]

If it’s a bias I doubt some folks on the internet will change your mind.

Whatcar do a reliability survey for brands so make of it what you will.

https://www.whatcar.com/news/2021-what-car-reliabi...