So funny looking at Renaults—remembering what fragile piles they were. Dauphine, gad, it’d croak if you looked at it crosswise. If I remember accurately a 3 main bearing crank and little bitty rod bearings. I had an R8 in college, never stopped working on it, head gasket, radiator, rods, til I dumped it. But I have to admit, the R5 (Le Car) wasn’t bad, in 1988 I rented one in Paris and piled my wife and new baby and luggage in it and went south to Nice, over to Italy, up through Switzerland and Germany up the Rhine and over to Reims and back to Paris, and on all the freeways I think I never lifted my heavy foot off the go pedal, ran it 80 ish the whole way (on downhills anyway) and never had a problem. I was racing cars at the time and showed it no mercy. I wouldn’t have driven it like that if I owned it, but we had no problems. I think the best of these little post 60’s Euro cars survived if they followed the VW Bug model— don’t let them make enough power to hurt themselves. But the rest— Yugos, various Fiats, etc— not so much.
One of my college roomates showed up in a small car with a roughly 250 cc engine, not exactly sure. I believe it was an Isetta, but 60+ years have passed, so again, not certain. He drove it back and forth from home every 6 weeks, about 150 miles. It was so small, 4 of us lifted it over the porch rail and set it down trapped on the porch where we lived while he was in class one day. He showed up in an Oldsmobile the next semester.
My Peugeot 304 had 3 lug wheels. Tire shop hated it because they had to change the tires manually as there was no center hole in the rims to facilitate the machine.
An alien with dust/windproof goggles that incorporate advanced, center-mounted weapon sighting/comm systems? Oh, and it's wearing some nose jewelry in the form of a dual-chain tassel. I must be super gay but, oddly, I've never been probed. WTF?
“There’s a buzzing sound coming from my electric panel.” “Fucking Square D quality has gone to shit!”