What's the deal with French engineering and why does everyone tell me to stay away?

In real life most teams who win races have french motors inside the car.

Check

this. Buy Dacia and save money

Parts supply chain quality control here. The meme about German (except for some high performance Audi and Mercedes products) and Korean cars isn't as true as people like to pretend it is, but French cars are markedly less reliable than their competition not Brit bad but still pretty lousy.

Don’t listen to him. His sample size is 1.
Anyone will tell you anecdotes, but nobody realises how little is done in-house at car companies. If a component blows you can’t make a statement about the car brand because it could be made in Germany, Austria, Italy or wherever. And the same people might do different and similar components for other brands. In fact, that’s highly likely.

Skoda is just a cheap Volkwagen

Actually they aren't that cheap anymore. KIAs and Dacias are the poor mans cars these days.

For what models and in what time? Also for what market? It depends on a lot of factors if a batch is good or bad. Don’t make such general statements.

I work with statistics every day, statements like xyz is good and abc is bad makes me cringe.

Can you really buy a fucking Dacia for 10 or 15.000€? I mean I always wonder whether these things just start breaking apart after a few years.

You can buy them and they are solid. It’s renaults old tech paired with low cost manufacturing processes (straight cut lines instead of nice design for example).

They are one of the most efficient cars in terms of bang for buck. But don’t expect any comfort, they are noisy and full of bendy plastics.

the latest models are great desu

My criteria for a "good car" is reliability and long life. If we are talking electrics and mechanical parts, German cars last a long time if properly looked after with servicing. French and Korean cars + European Ford are usually good for the first 5 years before they fall to shit, with Ford in particular suffering from terrible quality control and their vehicles shit the bed completely unpredictably and at random. All the rest of the manufacturers are shite, fucking Dacia is a chicken coop on wheels.
If you buy cheap shit it wont last, its cheap for a reason. Sell your new French car before the warrant is up. Do NOT buy a brit car if you need a daily driver because it wont.

What is Finland?

Why there is no Finnish engineers?

You are obviously comparing cars of different price ranges.

Also what do you mean by reliability? That it brings you safely from A to B? That nothing ever needs replacement apart from the maintenance replacement parts? That non-critical systems never fail? That it never makes funny noises? That the repair never costs more than 200€?
Please stop talking out of your ass with those anecdotes.

Thank you mr. cup-holder-engineer but I will trust my hands on experience and knowledge gleaned from actual mechanics who fix these things as opposed to your excel spreadsheet.
And yes a reliable car does not need to be repaired apart from things on the maintaince schedule and wont fail to start at 6am on monday morning or the turbo simply shits itself for no reason and the car is rip.

Are you 14?

The quality of engineering varies too much for the likes of Peugeot to build brand loyalty, or perception of quality.
The Peugeot 205 a great car, very reliable. The success of the 205 propelled sales of the 206 in the early 00's, but the car was destined to have problems after 140,000 miles. Nowadays you see literally no 206's on the road but you still see the odd 205.

Still third-largest Europe-based automaker In 2018, Renault is second.
First should be Volkswagen