The Italian Paradigm.
One fine summer evening in 1967, in the Parisian suburb of Vaucresson (where my parents lived), I decided to conduct a photographic study of cornering attitudes of the typical cars of the day. Italian cars, as shown by this Fiat 124 coupe above, exhibited controlled lean but an otherwise supple suspension.
A Mini in the midst of causing lust.
Although not typical of the average British sedan (saloon), Minis, especially if they had any Paddy Hopkirk mods, cornered even flattter.
Peugeot 204?
Now that we get Gallic, we begin to see a bit more lean, as in this Peugeot 204.
Citroen DS19.
This is my sister cranking the family DS19 through this right-hander. OK, so she didn’t exactly clip the apex.
Whoa! A 2CV Fourgonnette.
Now we are getting into some serious leanage. A Citroen 2CV commercial. Nice tight line.
And the winner is…
OK, maybe not much more lean than the Fourgonnette, but really working at it. The classic 2CV cornering attitude. Those Michelin Xs weren’t even screaming.
And then there’s the Reliant Robin…
This is my new favoritist LMFASO video. Made my day.
Untill the tyres howl French cars arent even gettin near their stride I can catch alledged great handling BMWs and such thru fast corners without even activating the passive rear wheel steering in my Xsara.
Ah, noting like seeing the bottom half of the drivers window fly out in a 2cv. And the joy of seeing my step daughter get ‘sea sick’ in the Cx. Who can ever foget the pleasure of an R5 tipping at a 40 degree angle. Falling but never feld.
Very cool! Seeing is believing. Anyway, how about modern French cars? Do they handle any differently from cars from other countries? Or have they lost their unique attributes and become bland and not that different from cars from any other countries? They already does in terms of styling…
your photographic archive is incredible!
I have just scratched the surface.
R5! R5! R5!
I remember riding in a coworker’s Le Car years ago, and it was like being on a waterbed perched atop a bowling ball… and he took every corner with “wild abandon,” too.
As we once said, “redlined every gear and cornered on the door handles”. That’s why god created morons.
How do you know it was redlined? They didn’t come with a tach (well, mine didn’t anyway). You just rev it until it stops pulling, and then upshift. God I miss that car.
These photos are brilliant Kevin! A laboratory of cornering.
great stuff, keep it coming.
What a GREAT submission!! It’s beams at you like some long-lost missive or transmission that might have left earth in the ’70’s, circled the galaxy and found its way back to earth for us to marvel at today! I LOVE IT! No images could better depict the various European national characters more humorously than these images do. The best part is that the humor’s direction is not AT but goes WITH, providing the crucial perspective that too few people today bother to create, preferring instead to take the lazy lower path of snarky, cheap shots. Not so here and I applaud you.
In the 1970’s, back when French cars could actually be purchased in the US, I recall Road & Track and Car and Driver used to term the way French cars heaved dramatically into curves the “Gallic Lean”, playing on the more commonly known phrase denoting what Anglo Saxons considered a unique French body language stance for not giving a shit, the “Gallic Shrug”. Whatever one calls it, anyone who’s ever driven a French car knows well that sharp angles in turns in a French car need not mean imminent danger. It’s just a fun part of the ride and the long travel of the suspension the key element to what makes a car FRENCH and we Americans are diminished by not being able have such cars from which to choose.