You wake up in San Francisco

I'm gonna meet some gentle people there

Awlright, San Fran during the height of AIDS. Good times, man, good times.

SF got cleaner during the 80's that's for sure

Sounds nice fren. What do you know about Monterey? For some reason the name sounds really familiar to me but it seems to be a rather small town.

I'd go to UCSF and tell them to just give Mike Savage a dang job as a college professor so he never goes into radio to spend the rest of his life whining that he didn't get a job as a college professor because of affirmative action.

This one might be San Fransisco, but it could be anywhere in California.

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it's alright. mostly known for its wine, everyone who lives there either works in agriculture or has retired and is there to die. just don't go too far south or you'll end up in "sunbaked white trash" territory

I've got to get to the Battery and warn everyone about Metallica. Don't trust this band, they're in it for the money and will eventually sell out and betray heavy metal.

I've never been to Monterrey but it seems like a small coastal town with good views. There's a big city in Mexico also called Monterrey, which may be what you're referring too

at least Indians are civilized enough to DESIGNATE street shitting sites, here it's just a free for all

Fren I think you should go here then if you want to stop Metallica

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Ok apu

That's a lot of import cars there. I can see a couple of VWs, a Peugot, some Japanese cars, a BMW. The West Coast always did favor them over domestic cars.

Hey there, sailor. Lookin' for a good time?

Do you have Peugeot up there? What about Citroen

I walk across the Golden Gate to my parent's house and never set foot in the city again.

The images are from /o/. It's weird because a few of them are all over the internet while the rest are completely unique. The guy who dumped them said he scanned most of them, but I didn't believe it since the first few pictures actually showed up on google.

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No.

ah, back before the 1965 immigration reform when california had a booming middle class and was the champion of the american dream

who wants to stop on by motor city?

Peugot gave up on the US in the early 90s due to poor sales. Citroen was literally banned in the 70s for not meeting Federal rollover safety standards.

>ah, back before the 1965 immigration reform when california had a booming middle class and was the champion of the american dream
These pics are from the 80s so you're a little late for that and CA didn't become a shithole until the 90s when, how shall I say, control of the state switched parties.

BMW's and Toyota's are the most common cars here. The most common domestic is a tesla

My guess is without a lot of import restrictions it's easier to ship cars by boat to California than have them transported there from Detroit

>Peugot gave up on the US in the early 90s due to poor sales
Even then they were mostly only found on the West Coast. Renault tried the US multiple times--pre-WWI, then again in 1948-52, in 56-62, in 68 to 88. Peugot sold cars in the US from the early 50s but were most successful in the mid-70s to early 80s. Sales sank after that though and they pulled out in 91.

Overall, French cars failed to offer anything unusually good or unique over Japanese, German, or Swedish brands.

Wear some flowers in your head

suicide by lancing my boils with a dirty needle I pick up from the pavement

Actually it would have more to do with European cars generally being more suited to the road conditions of the West Coast. Ford/GM/Chrysler always tended to build cars suited for the Midwest. The narrow, twisty roads on the West Coast were a better fit for the smaller, more handling-focused European cars.

>Overall, French cars failed to offer anything unusually good or unique over Japanese, German, or Swedish brands.
They've always had this issue, other than a few quirky models. On top of that the build quality in the 2000s was absolutely abhorrent, in particular all the electronic parts that were just recently getting stuffed everywhere in cars were subpar which damaged their brand image even more.
Only since the last few years they're doing fine again now they figured out people just want a practical and affordable car. Clio has been the best seller for a few years in a row now ahead of Polo and Golf for example.

Well that and American cars are shit.
t.west coast european car owner

France has no car culture, they've never viewed cars as anything but a basic appliance. There are no premium French cars, they're all shitboxes.

They also have white flags stuffed away in the trunk mandatory by law

cocks...

Yeah you're right. Audi was so cutting edge they even had cars where you didn't need to step on the gas to accelerate. How could GM compete with something that state-of-the-art?

I'm just stating facts. Take a look at sports cars from 1993 and see what type of shape their in. I guarantee you the Jap and European cars are in better shape by virtue of being better made. American cars died in the 80's

Ford has cars that were designed to have a gas tank rupture upon impact and figured out it was cheaper to pay off some families rather than fixing their mistake.

I still don't think you can find a company with as many fuck-ups as GM of all companies. They're pretty much the worst.

From my experience in Europe, obviously French cars were most abundant in France. Italians seemed to drive German cars most often and Italian brands like Fiat were a little less common. In Sweden everyone either had a Volvo or a German car.

You think that because you probably went to capital cities mainly.
I see every brand driving around here as long as they're tiny as fuck and have a 1.2L engine.

>Ford has cars that were designed to have a gas tank rupture upon impact
That was really an overstated meme anyway. They sold about 100 bazillion Pintos in the 70s and all of 28 deaths from gas tank explosions were recorded. It was also no longer an issue in 73 and up models as Ford had to extend the frame rail a bit to fit 5 mph bumpers which inadvertently fixed the gas tank position by adding more space between it and the rear of the car.

I should add, Ireland seemed to have Skodas all over the place.

I'd love to have an Italian car. An Alfa Romeo or Maserati but I'd be in the shop half of the time. Shame they're just as bad as American cars

I was to San Fran a few years ago and hardly saw a single American car around other than utility trucks and vans.

After WWII, France was in ruins and broke so the government decided to tax large engines in an effort to encourage the manufacture of poverty shitboxes (instead of luxury makes) so average Jacques could afford a car. This led to French cars being tin cans with tiny engines.

They were famously unreliable as well. Citroen had a hydraulic suspension system that worked excellently...when it worked, which it usually didn't and few American mechanics knew how to fix something like this. Peugots were relatively pricey for what they were and had shit electrical systems.

By the 80s, the dollar/franc exchange rate made French cars simply too expensive and the price was not worth their comparative mediocrity when a Japanese car offered more value for the money and German cars were more advanced and luxurious.

Shitboxes that aren't fast and unreliable. Worst of two worlds

I quickly let loose my intestines and produce 20+ pounds of pure shit.

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Italian and Swedish cars also for a long time suffered from designs and engineering from the planet Neptune that American mechanics didn't know what to make of. German and Japanese manufacturers avoided unconventional mechanics and layouts, they instead stuck to conservatively-designed cars that were well-engineered and put together.

VW/Audi to be fair were a little more adventurous in having stuff like air cooled engines and 5 cylinder engines. French cars have also tended to be diesel-centric and Americans have never entirely embraced the idea of diesel-powered passenger cars.

I also recall French cars tended to have shitty automatic transmissions.

BMW has shit automatics too. Mercedes aren't bad if a little over-complex. And even Honda has never quite figured out how to make automatics work with a V6.

I'd taze the tweakers and vandalize the Fallout-tier art student communes.

Thanks for the photos, user. This one looks like Oakland, CA

>VW/Audi to be fair were a little more adventurous in having stuff like air cooled engines and 5 cylinder engines
Audi their entire history is trying cutting edge stuff just so they could be accepted among the big boys.
Someone in my parents village has a genuine Audi Quattro, pretty cool stuff. But Audi just doesn't have that many classics. Always the odd one out

Meet the Citroen DS19, the car in which:

>there's a button to engage the brakes instead of a pedal
>the transmission shifter sticks out the top of the steering column
>manual shift but the clutch operates automatically
>hydraulic lift suspension which lets you raise the wheels on either side of the car independently

As you can see, this was just too fucking weird for Americans.

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:)
Ít seems like they're all just stolen from various Flickr collections.

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They always tried these weird things hoping it made them stand out or it would stick. So many questionable design choices.
Those DS series cars also have hydraulic suspension.

The bridge in the background looks more like the Richmond San Rafel bridge, but I can't find the angle from which the image was taken.

I put flowers in my hair

French cars often tend to be hatchbacks and Americans usually prefer sedans.

Renault had a starter motor that required the entire engine being taken out to replace it. I kid you not.

To me, that looks like the old eastern span of the SF-Oakland Bay bridge. (pictured) It's no longer there, as a new snazzier cable-stayed bridge opened in 2013 and the old one was demolished. I think the photo is from downtown Oakland looking north

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The new bridge was a total shitshow, it went $4.3M over budget and opened 6 years late

That makes total sense. I didn't know they replaced a bridge

The Le Car had an engine mounted backwards with the transmission in front behind the bumper. The engine was about 16" long, but had a camshaft that was about 30" long that protruded from the back of the head with a pulley on it to drive the accessories. Often people (or other shops) would replace the alternator belt and tighten the adjustment a little to far, resulting in the camshaft snapping off at the head when the engine was started; about a $1500 repair just for tightening a belt wrong. They had little 1" long rubber blocks that the exhaust was fastened to all down the side of the car; if a driver was a little too aggressive with acceleration and braking the normal movement of the engine would cause these blocks to tear off, dropping the exhaust pipe onto the road without much warning.

Peugots were similar but pricier and it was hard to find service information for them. Many parts also had to be ordered from France.

>6 years late
>$4.3M over budget
This doesn't add up. Do you mean M as in milliard? How can something be 6 years late and only 4.3 million over budget, lmao.
They're only a year into the renewall of the southern ring road of my city and already announced they will need 2 more years and probably double the budget from 640 million to over 1 billion.

Peugot of America was also run by chimpanzees.

>exploit legal loopholes in consumer protection laws to the max to cheat customers with repairs and warranties
>also imported the French style of management/labor relations to the US which quickly resulted in people finding out how they could do the minimum amount of work for the maximum pay
>trying to rival BMW or Volvo both of which had better reputations and images

The local government in the SF bay area is super paranoid about earthquakes. In 1989 we had a magnitude 6.9 which caused a portion of the old bridge (which was built in the '30s) to collapse. After that, there were repeated I-beam fractures which caused major closures. So, in the end, they ended up building a totally new one.

I made a typo, it was $4.3 billion over budget. Guess that an inefficient bureaucracy is something you can find everywhere

Picture of the new bridge, it's not bad looking

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I'm going to sound like a brainlet but which is the new and which is the old one?
Left looks much newer, but it's already in use whereas right is seemingly under construction.

Left is the new one. The construction vehicles on the right one are there to tear it down. The city planners were worried that if an earthquake struck, the old one would fall on the new one

A French engineer studying in the US told me he always thought it was because they didn't have good A/C systems being that France has milder summers than much of the US.

They blame everything and everyone. Fact remains their design philosophy is a fucking mess and there isn't any consistency to be found.
For starters there's 3 main French brands and they all compete in the same market.

They also for way too long refused to adopt some luxury line like the Japanese were doing in the 90s when Acura and Lexus were created. They have DS now but it's from 2009

So they can't produce good sports cars, they can't produce reliable appliance cars, and they can't produce luxury cars. Are French brands subsidized by the government or something?

>Even then they were mostly only found on the West Coast. Renault tried the US multiple times--pre-WWI, then again in 1948-52, in 56-62, in 68 to 88. Peugot sold cars in the US from the early 50s but were most successful in the mid-70s to early 80s. Sales sank after that though and they pulled out in 91.
You can tell that the French mostly just treated the US market as an opportunistic thing that they could enter and exit at will when they saw an opening. They never did seem that committed to establishing a permanent presence there as the German, Japanese, and Korean brands did.

>Are French brands subsidized by the government or something?
Actually you're far closer to the truth than you'd dared hope.

They have some clever business practices. Alliance with Nissan, Toyota production, Dacia (fastest growing car brand in the world after Tesla) and plenty of their models sell really well such as the 108/C1 which is co-designed with Toyota.
Also a lot of expansions into markets such as North-Africa, Middle-East and Latin-America.

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Every car brand reflects the national character of its country in some way:

American: Big, powerful, in-your-face, comfy, a bit tacky. Build quality is good only if we feel we can make money from this particular model, otherwise we'll just half-ass it. Generally easy to mod or repair as DIY is a big part of American culture.

German: First-rate, advanced engineering, autistic dedication to perfection, farfegnugen.

Japanese: Conservative approach, focus on taking an existing design and refining it rather than being innovative. Autistic dedication to perfection. Lots of gadgets in cars, though generally only on models sold domestically.

French: All the worst aspects of a socialistic workforce and mentality--lazy and indifferent workmanship, workers go on strike every two minutes, cars must be for the masses, not the classes (we beheaded all those guys back in the day, remember?) so we only build poverty shitboxes. On top of that, nonsensical design and engineering choices just to show we're different and not copying Germany or Anglo cunts.

British (when they actually had a car industry): Same problems with a socialistic workforce and mentality, which led to crude, backwards, and poorly built cars but add in that British love of cheesy aristocratic pomp.

Italian: It's a fashion accessory like a Gucci handbag designed to look cool but be otherwise garbage.

Korean: No identity of our own, just copy whatever Japan does.

And finally, Swedish:

Well-engineered, solid everyman cars perfect for our collectivistic Nordic society. Simple as.

>Korean: No identity of our own, just copy whatever Japan does.
Ok I laughed out loud at this one.

So many fucking hills

My grandfather had a used 59 Renault Dauphin he bought while in the Air Force in the 60s. It was trash. Had the durability of wet cardboard and a top speed of about 60 mph.

>Italian
Beautiful sexy cars that are fun to drive but require a lot of work to maintain.fix. The high maintenance gf that comes from a rich family

>British
Small little fun shitboxes and okay luxury cars. Great capable suvs when they don't have electrical problems

>Americans are afraid of apartment buildings
Clown country

Back in the day, Ceausescu approved of Renault selling cars in Romania as it was then a state-owned company so he figured it was socialistic and therefore ok.

>Ceausescu
I've yet to read something about him that doesn't make him sound like a complete tool. Hell I remember one of his goals was turning Romania into a world superpower on par with the USA and USSR.
As much as it's true I've heard next gen Korean cars are among the best value you can get. I had Hyundai i20 on holiday and liked it, though the engine was a fucking vacuum cleaner and that's coming from someone with a Toyota Starlet

>Ay i'm walkin 'ere!

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Wrong city bud

What car do you drive? Do you even need to in the Netherlands?

It can't be worse than when he went to North Korea and decided "Hey, yeah. That's what we need to be more like."

Read my post again frend. It's in there

>Do you even need to in the Netherlands?
If you're a normal adult person absolutely yes but students and young people can get around without one.
The idea we live car free is a complete meme parroted by idiots who are still studying or expats who just moved to Amsterdam last month for a sick 80k tech job.
Reality is our highways are completely congested every morning, trains overcrowded with little more capacity left on the railroads to the point our government is giving up and instead tries to get people to go to work later.