Peugeot 607 : 
307 Coupé and Cabriolet CC 
407 RS : 
Citroen C4 : 
So..Pretty or not ?
Posted on 10/06/2004 7:19:17 AM PDT by quidnunc
Okay, know going in that this story is going to cause your brain to curdle. You've got French technology, French manufacturing, and a French driver all going wildly, terribly wrong. On top of that you have a not-ready-for-prime-time Google translation from German to English. It's going to be a rough ride, but once you get into the spirit of the thing it just sort of skips along.
To set the scene: You have a cutting-edge French car with "smart" technology that takes so many little, irritating tasks away from the driver. You know, little things like air conditioningl, seat adjustment, radio tuning, control over acceleration, braking, and the ability to shut the whole thing down. Add in a wide open road and what do you have? Terror on the tarmac!
[Text verbatim, but cut — out of respect for our shared humanity.]It was worse than a nightmare: A normal route on the motorway. To be stopped suddenly will the car ever faster, is no more.
Well one hour long hunted a French driver with speed 200 over the runway, in the Slalom around the other cars. …
It has a truck overhauled, when its car accelerated suddenly independently on 190 kilometers per hour, quoted the French daily paper "Le Parisien" the driver Hicham Dequiedt on Tuesday:
"It was impossible to drive more slowly. On the brake to step, nothing proved functioned. as useless. " …
A cause for the Horrortrip was a electronics error in the vehicle: the Tempomat of its Renault Vel Satis was defective. The ignition to switch off is not possibly been, since the car has a smart card instead of a key....
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at americandigest.org ...
"The nose is well. not finished. Looks like a first sketch."
Kinda like most of the new Caddilacs?
Actually, I think it looks pretty cool, although it better have some electrochromatic tinting for all that glass on top.
yes these things (or something like them) are here in california now.
i have 2 of them stuck in the tiretreads of my expedition:)
"Be happy you never owned a Renault Fuego."
A friend had one, and second hand, at that. Had one of those cool retractable soft tops. It actually worked quite well for him for the most part, and never left him stranded. Its final demise involved getting creamed by a pickup. It was actually a pretty neat car and was great on the highway.
That's just inexcusable. Whoever designed that, whoever specified the soft bolts, should be kicked in the nuts. Once. Per day. For the rest of his life.
So did Renault engineer the attachment of the propeller on France's newest Aircraft Carrier? You know, the propeller on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean?
Not renault engineers, but Ford engineers. You know Ford Pinto ?. The explosive car.
So don't be stupid, there are bad engineers everywhere. in France or in USA.
FRENCH AREN'T ENGINEERS ?
http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/video/citroen.php
Airbus is a french compagny based at Toulouse.
Arianespace is à french compagny based at Les Mureaux (suburd of Paris)
Alstom which(who) builds subways (NY/chicago..) french too
Thomson TV called RCA in USA french, Alcatel, Gemplus, Peugeot, Valeo, Michelin, Danon, Dassault-Falcon jet, Thalès, Sagem, Orange...
Took me awhile to get used to (as former owner of a Triumph TR-6). With that car, it was a question of "fill up the oil and top off the gas." Constant ruptured diaphragms in the CD-4 Strombergs (I carried an impact wrench and TWO sets of spares). And the electrical system . . . with a dead short designed into the wiring (which we bypassed) . . . not to mention the slow trickle drain to ground that we never could find . . . installed a battery cutoff switch in the glove box . . . somebody tried to steal it once and hotwired the ignition, but didn't look in the glove box. They gave up in disgust, leaving all the wires hanging out of the steering column. We just stuffed them back in . . . .
All that said, I loved that car. Great low-end acceleration, and it could negotiate square corners at 60 mph (guess any car could when the tops of the tires are about level with your ears.) We had to give it up when we started having babies - no place for a car seat. We sold our ancient Toyota Land Cruiser ute at the same time for the same reason.
Now we're in Fords and my 16 year old daughter has a Volvo wagon. Oh, yesterday, leave me alone . . . . :-D
bttt
French 'calamity' carrier heads for sea - again
By Julian Coman in Paris
(Filed: 11/03/2001)
ONE of the most embarrassing sagas in French maritime history took a further twist last week when France's most accident-prone warship began the countdown to another attempt to take to the high seas.
In the Ministry of Defence and on the quayside at Toulon, where the 40,000-ton aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle had been dry-docked, sceptical observers crossed their fingers and prayed for a fair wind.
The idea of France's first nuclear-powered carrier was dreamt up in 1986. It soon became a pet project of the then president, Francois Mitterrand. The ship that was built has proved, however, to be a humiliating and expensive naval failure. Fifteen years and £7 billion later, it has still to complete its first successful tour of service and has suffered a series of mishaps.
An attempt to go to sea in November ended characteristically in disaster somewhere in the Bermuda triangle. A substantial part of a 19-ton propeller broke off, obliging the carrier to limp back to southern France.
Since then, naval engineers have worked round the clock for three months in preparation for the next bid for seaworthiness. Last Tuesday, the vessel moved into the bay of Toulon proper. Its 1,950 crew are hoping for an April sailing, although no one was celebrating prematurely.
Frustration with the carrier has become palpable. Some of the more mutinous sailors of the Charles de Gaulle have taken to calling it "the damned ship [le bateau maudit]". The French minister of defence, Alain Richard, has promised to take whoever was responsible for the latest propeller debacle to court. He has even admitted that the Charles de Gaulle has become a subject of "ridicule".
It is not hard to understand why. The propeller incident was only one of a growing list of examples of mishap, misjudgment and mismanagement of the ship that was intended to be a symbol of French military prestige in the 21st century. "If you look back on the history of this ship," said one senior naval official, "it has just been a catalogue of errors."
Even the ship's name caused trouble. In 1986, President Mitterrand decided to call it the Richelieu, after the cardinal. In 1989, however, the Gaullist Jacques Chirac became prime minister. Mr Chirac believed that such a potent symbol of national pride should be named after the general who inspired his own political beliefs.
After a ferocious row, Mr Chirac prevailed. While the arguments raged, however, construction was falling further behind schedule. As economic recession began to bite in the 1990s, the project was starved of funding. On four occasions, work on the ship was suspended altogether. It was clear that the 1996 deadline for active service was wildly unrealistic.
Mr Chirac, then president of France, made a virtue out of necessity and decided that the Charles de Gaulle should become a millennium project, ready for service in 2000. After years of neglect, technical work and development began to be conducted at breakneck speed. By the late 1990s, the carrier was ready for its first proper sea tests, at which point things began to go even more awry.
The ship's flightdecks, it became clear, were too short to accommodate the American Hawkeye radar aircraft that France had bought for the vessel. In addition, the decks had been painted with a substance that eroded the arrest wires used to slow the aircraft as they landed.
The ship's electronics circuits weremalfunctioning, while its personnel, it emerged, were being exposed to unacceptable levels of radiation. The ship was simply not fit to sail. After many months of repairs, the Charles de Gaulle was relaunched last year on a cruise to Guadaloupe. Then the propeller problems began.
The firm that made the propellers, Atlantic Industries, went bankrupt in 1999. When the ship sails next month, it will borrow two propellers from older carriers. This time, the voyage must be a success. "If repeated mishaps don't finish a ship off, ridicule does," said Mr Richard. The French navy's communications officer in Toulon, Pierre Olivier is issuing similarly warnings. "Nothing must be left to chance for this trip," he said. "Everything must be in order this time."
Oh, my god. It is a real scandal!
And since 2001 they found à happy end ? :-)
50 000 000 persons without electricity in 2003. Cause your electric netword is too old... Your are stronger, 50 000 000 persons !!!
But I am not interessed by this kind of comments. I like usa. I like the Americans, because they represent many of our dreams.
Usa is a big nation, France also. We are closer than different. and Many persons think as me.
Vive les états-unis, vive la France, vive l'Europe.
Stronger together.
Peugeot 607 : 307 Coupé and Cabriolet CC 407 RS : Citroen C4 : So..Pretty or not ?
Renault should be banned from building anything or at least kept from exporting their trash!
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