Though being French, maybe they taxed lug nuts the same way they taxed horse power, the more lug nuts the more tax.
It did. Same arrangement of putting the studs such that the holes in the wheel were on the top of a ridge, so they would self-misalign if you didn't have the wheel perfectly aligned (blind!) when you tried to put it on in the dark and rain.
In Hell, the French are the engineers.
Their plastics engineers of that era were equally bad. The sheet goods covering the thin urethane foam padding on the dash lasted three seasons before becoming brittle enough to crack. The hardened foam didn't last that long. Good old naugahyde and foam was an easy fix that lasted until at 120k+ miles when the 403 expired.
Also for a nation that produced so many artists and artisans, they completely missed the boat with automotive paint. Every French car had badly sun faded chalking finish after 3 years. Explains why most of the Renaults sold were white of off white; didn't show as much.