Am on my hols in rural France at moment.
Q - If this country is so agricultural..........where are all the 4x4's? They don't seem to need them here. I have not seen a single X5, Landcruiser etc on French plates, only UK ones.
Q - Why is there still a French motor industry? Reps drive Renaults + Peugeots, the only Mondies I have seen have been on UK plates.
Q - Equally, how can there still be a French motor industry when they seem to keep their cars for so long? I have seen Ami 8's, Simca 1100GLS's, Renault 16's 19's and 21's all huffing and puffing away
Q - Why, when they are doing roadworks on a motorway, are there not 200 miles of cones and 1 lane and traffic jams for miles before you get to them? 'Cos all they need is a van with a flashing "a gauche" arrow about 100 yds (metres?) from the roadworks. Seems to work.
Q - Why do I want to come back and drive in the UK?
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Q1: 4x4 are rarely bought on the basis of need. How many in the UK even get their tyres muddy?
Q2: Because the French are very nationalistic.
Q3: They export a large percentage of them.
Q4: Privately run and maintained. Strangely the customer (motorist) comes first.
Q5: Agree 100%.
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I know loads of farmers - none of them drive 4x4s other than Land Rovers, Toyota pick ups and the odd Disco for the Mrs.
The French Govt. does a grand job of supporting manufacturing industry with "help".
Lots of French people live on very low incomes. My sister is married to a Frenchman who works as a hotel porter 3.5 days a week. She lives OK, off the state, in that he pays nominal tax, and she gets child allowances etc.
France is 4/5 times the size of the UK, with about the same population, and much lower property prices. They don't commute 100 miles a day to/from work.
You must be mad.
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As a French resident and taxpayer:
Q1 It's true, most people buy a 4x4 because they fancy one not because they need one or certainly not all year. Nobody needs a car that can hit 60 mph in 6 seconds either but these drivers don't seem to attract the negative comments
Q2 Because the government has traditionally given huge piles of my taxes to manufacturers to 'help' them - that is to protect them from their own incompetence and encourage them to continue to produce overpriced, rubbish cars. If I got value for this money Renault would now be producing extremely good cars and practically giving them away. The same can be said of Air France and other companies.
Q3 People tend to keep their cars for a long time here because there is much less snobbery about having the newest model, and there are far fewer company cars so people pay for their cars with their own money and thus know what owning a car really costs. It is also possible to keep a dangerous wreck on the road because of the laughably lenient inspection system for cars. Even when it is applied properly it is nowhere strict as an MOT. The government has licenced a large number of testing stations to avoid the testers being able to rip people off with a virtual monopoly, but this has had the opposite effect. There are many testing stations struggling to survive and which are tempted to pass vehicles which should not be on the road. To avoid being found out if the vehicle is stopped by the police 3 days after passing its test, these testers pass vehicles with faults that can't be seen in a roadside check - steering, brakes, shock absorbers, corrosion in load-bearing elements of the body - in other words the most serious faults
Q4 Because the french motorway system is not permanently overloaded with stressed-out people driving to a tight deadline.
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Q1: Who needs a 4x4 when you've got a 2CV?
Q2: Why get a foreign car when there are so many mechanics who know French cars inside out - and comparatively few who are experts in foreign rubb cars?
Q3: No problem - as long as good Frenchmen buy French, and British buyers of French cars change their cars every 3 years.
Q4: Not quite the same attitude to Health and Safety. One just has to drive along a few French mountain roads with vertical drops, and think "Hmmm - if this was Britain, I'm sure there would be a barrier there."
Q5: Roll on my next holiday in France!
(p.s. Good post, tack. Makes me wish I were there.)
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I had thought that my views on French motoring (and life in general, I guess) were seen through rose-tinted holiday goggles, so it's nice to have the corroboration of a resident.
I have to say that the French do possess a certain je ne sais quoi - but I've no idea what it is :-)
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It is also possible to keep a dangerous wreck on the road because of the laughably lenient inspection system for cars. Even when it is applied properly it is nowhere strict as an MOT.
Sheesh, given Renault's obsession with safety the above is so ironic, don't you think?
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">Nobody needs a car that can hit 60 mph in 6 seconds either<"
I concur, it's a bit slovenly.
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Q1- The 4x4's are in places where you need them and there are plenty of them. Not as much need to pose in something costing a years wages in France
Q2+3. French motor industry is propped up by their government. Not only by subsidy but also by compelling governmental services to use them. When your only realistic choice of a garage somewhere near you is a French marque you obviously buy one. Plus patriotism of course and a refusal to believe that most French cars are pretty poor- whatever happened to Peugeots that were fun to drive and quirky Citroens?
Q4. traffic density is nowhere near as bad as other countries except round some major cities.
Q5. Because there is no priorite a droite and there are no French people. Certainly better driving over there until you have a crack at Paris though.......
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"Q5 - Why do I want to come back and drive in the UK? "
This is a mystery to me. Why you would prefer to drive here when you can drive on the (in the main) uncongested roads of France? When I came back from my hols in France last Summer, the first thing to depress me apart from the volume of traffic on the M26 which was high was the 8 mile standing queue that I encountered on the M11. Good job I was on my motorbike.
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"Q5 - Why do I want to come back and drive in the UK? "
Did I misinterperet the irony in this question?
Sorry
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Most common French-owned 4x4 round here is the Lada Niva which, amazingly enough, you can still buy new.
Over in the Alps they seem to go for the Mercedes Unimog - obviously suits their needs exactly.
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Irony? The French may or may not have a word for "entrepreneur" but I'm sure they don't have one for "tailgating" - I'm pretty much a Francophile but it's the French drivers that would make it impossible for me to settle over there...
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French motor industry is propped up by their government. Not only by subsidy but also by compelling governmental services to use them. >>
Not always true. You see a lot of Gendarmes in Focuses these days, or Scooby Iprezas.
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No you don't. You see a minimal number.
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The reason for the Subaru is that the requirement was for a high powered 4x4, of which there is no French option.
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No you don't. You see a minimal number.
My observations when there last week were that the blue Focuses ply the autoroutes whereas white (mostly Pug 307s or Meganes) do the local stuff. I was driving mostly on the autoroutes and every Gendarme car I saw there was a Focus. I only speak as I found, sorry if it rocks your boat.
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It doesn't 'rock my boat' at all.
However in the interests of actually being factually correct I thought it wise to point out that the French Police, CRS, Gendarmerie and Douanes use predominently French cars.
France is a big country, I take it you didn't drive on every autoroute in it? I'll regard anecdotal evidence from your holiday as less worthwhile evidence than my own experience of having lived there and driving through it on an almost weekly basis if that's ok with you.
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There seem to be plenty of 4x4s in Switzerland and Germany in the Rhine area (with blacked out windows too) but it's true that there are not so many French ones.
About Renault, I am sure I read somewhere that Renault have to give the French government 20% of their profits every year as a punishment ever since they did something bad but I can't remember what it was. I'll have to look it up.
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"France is 4/5 times the size of the UK"
France 545,630 sq km
UK 241,590 sq km
--
Phil
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>>I take it you didn't drive on every autoroute in it?>>
Being a regular visitor since the 60's, (i.e a half dozen or so times a year) I probably use French auto routes more often than I do motorways in the UK. Apart from the French National hols heading down south, I don't believe I have ever been held up. I cannot say the same of the M1/4/5/6/25/40 etc.
I also like the fact that in French towns, you can actually park outside small independant shops, like boulangeries, pharmacies.....there is even a marked parking spot. Unlike the UK where it is positively discouraged.
To add some negative balance.....they are careless in car parks when it comes to administering "door dings" It also worries me to see men in cafes at 8am drinking coffee and beer or cognac or wine. Although they don't have the Friday/Saturday night alco-pop fuelled punchups, there must be a lot of fully topped up blokes driving around the bocage.
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That's nice tack but why quote a comment from me that wasn't in an way relating to you?
Have you found in 6 trips a year to France that the French authorities use mostly French cars?
As for the door ding thing I once came back to my wreck of an old MKII GTi to find a brand new Safrane 'executive' parked so close I couldn't get in the drivers door-literally within 2 inches. On the other side an Avantime parked almost as badly. Climbed in through the rear hatch and 'accidentally' left my mark on the Safrane on the way out. You wouldn't believe the mess old style bumpers can make on the side of a brand new Renault. Made me feel better when I saw the door dings his passenger made on my car but I imagine he just looked at it said 'Putain!' and moved on to his next bit of damage......it's quite normal in France to take your car to a bodyshop before you sell it and have all the damage made good......they even offer OAP discounts!!!
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>>why quote a comment from me that wasn't in an way relating to you? >>
doh! Holiday brain lost the thread of the conversation. I had to read this one 6 times through a haze of Bretton Cider.
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Breton Cider sounds fantastic wish I had some right now.
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Cider......ooh arh.... (or should that be eu er h) It's the only alcohol I can drink that doesn't give me gout!
PS, the road into Dinan (from the viaduct end, if you know it) has been blocked after part of the rampart wall fell down onto the carriageway. Still blocked 3 days later.
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Still blocked 3 days later.
Glad to hear some aspects of French life are similar to back here!
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There are loads of 4x4's in France but they are where they are really needed, in Paris, all wearing "75" plates.
They seem particularly fond on Volvo XC90's, anywhere else in France if you see any Volvo it'll be on UK or Netherlands plates but the Parisians love 'em.
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I don't know whether your 'really needed' comment was a little sarcastic but I agree with it entirely. Anyone who has actually lived in Paris will realise it's more hostile than the harshest natural environment.
When I lived there (slap bang in the centre) we started off with an old 911- completely useless and ended up with a Landcruiser Amazon (perfect other than the fact it was slow). With the Landcruiser you could park anywhere, even up the massive stepped kerbs they use to try and stop you (in Paris parking tickets go straight onto the floor when you find one on the car), if you could find a spot on the street it was child's play to make it big enough to fit the car in by shoving the other cars backward and forward. Also when you came back to find someone literally parked on your bumper it was equally easy to make ones exit by shunting them a car length up the road. Fitted with massive and deadly looking bull bars front and rear other motorists and kamikaze bikers/scooter riders avoided it like the plague. Part of my drive home involved the 2 worst roundabout in Paris- Porte Maillot and the Arc de Triumph- I used to drive through them like Moses parting the Red Sea.
If I lived there again I'd take a Porsche Cayenne but covered in spikes like the film 'Cars that ate Paris' (the other one)
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Part of my drive home involved the 2 worst roundabout in Paris- Porte Maillot and the Arc de Triumph- I used to drive through them like Moses parting the Red Sea.
You mean that even with a Landcruiser you still had to depend on a miracle from the Lord to get you to the other side? :-)
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