When I flew home from my exchange trip to Germany in the summer of 1984, the family picked me up at O’Hare Airport in a 1983 Renault Alliance.
Our Alliance was the Motor Trend Car of the Year Edition. There was a little plaque on the dash announcing ours as number 1,200 out of 3,000 made. All were identical: charcoal gray metallic paint, a decklid luggage rack, painted aluminum wheels, and a right-hand remote mirror. Inside, it had a leather-wrapped steering wheel and an electronic-tuning stereo radio with a cassette deck and six speakers. Ours had a five-speed manual transmission, and like all Alliances, it was quite slow. The car was also by far the smallest Dad had ever owned. The front seats were extremely comfortable. The back seats offered next to no leg room, which was not ideal for my brother and me at 5’10” and 6′, respectively.
I had a lot of freedom living with my host family in Germany. They gave me but one rule: if you come home after we go to bed, come in quietly so we don’t wake up. This was in stark contrast to all the restrictions my parents placed on me. When I came home, those restrictions felt like slipping into a straitjacket. My parents wouldn’t budge, and I slipped into a deep depression that lasted my entire senior year.
Upon graduation I still didn’t have my driver’s license even though I was 17. Dad had given me some driving lessons in the Renault but wasn’t very motivated about it. When I pestered him for more, it caused him only to drag his feet harder. We’d had a couple of bad fights while I was behind the wheel, too. I think he was afraid of me having a license. Maybe he was afraid of his son growing up, maybe he was afraid to give up any control.
But I wasn’t going to go off to college without that license. I turned 18 just two weeks before classes started. On that day the Bureau of Motor Vehicles considered me an adult and no longer required a parent to sign a financial responsibility agreement. I didn’t need Dad. I asked a neighbor to ride along as I drove to the license branch and took the test, Dad be darned. The photo on my first driver’s license showed me with the goofiest grin — of relief at finally being licensed, and of devilish anticipation of my dad finding the license waiting on the dining room table for him to see when he came home from work. Take that, Dad! You wouldn’t handle it, so I did.
While in high school, I taught myself to write computer programs. I loved it. When one of my teachers caught wind, he told me I should go to engineering school and study computer science and write code for a living. It’s not an overstatement to say that I was overcome. You mean they pay grown-ups to do this for a living? I had no idea. It set the direction of my life.
I was accepted to a well-regarded engineering school in Terre Haute, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. Rose was crazy expensive. Were it not for generous grants, including a huge one from the Lilly Foundation, we could never have afforded it.
Dad drove me to campus in the Renault. “If what you want to bring to school doesn’t fit in the car, it doesn’t go to school,” he said. The interior was cramped. It was a tall challenge, but I puzzle-pieced my stuff into every nook and cranny of that car and off we went.
Engineering school was tough. I had never worked that hard before, and I’ve never worked that hard since. Trying to figure out how to survive it, along the way I changed my major from Computer Science to Mathematics. That got me out of the electrical engineering courses that were killing me but let me take all of the CS courses I wanted as technical electives. I also learned that staying up until the wee hours finishing homework led straight to burnout, and that a good night’s sleep is worth far more than any poor homework grades.
My saving grace was the campus radio station. I had always been fascinated with radio and TV and was glad to have a chance to be on the air. The radio station was a pleasure that made the pressure bearable. If you’d like to hear me on the air, go here.
The Renault had not been fully reliable for Dad. Notably, it burned through alternators. By 1987, when it was on its third alternator, Dad had landed a Plant Manager role in a muffler factory. The commute was long, 50 miles round trip. Mom fretted that the Renault would strand him on some back country road, and pressured Dad into buying a new car. Dad returned to the blue oval, where he’d stay for the rest of his life. The base 1986 Ford Escort he bought tickled him deep in his penny-pinching ways — he got a great deal on a leftover ’86 as the ‘88s were starting to show up on the lot. The car had just one option, AC, but Dad was happy. He gave up the big Chevy van that he used to haul lumber and finished pieces for his cabinetmaking business, but kept the Renault, which my brother and I drove when we were home on breaks. We also shared it for the commute to our summer jobs.
Just before my senior year, Dad told me I could take the Renault back to school. I was blown away, as this was a level of trust my father had never offered. I learned much later that Mom, who normally went along to get along, told Dad in no uncertain terms that this would be happening. She didn’t play the demand card often, but when she did, it was for her sons’ benefit.
Then, a few days before I was to leave, my brother had a minor accident that rumpled the driver’s-side front fender. We were sure Dad would put my brother through the grinder over it.
I figured he’d make my brother get it repaired right away, which would keep me from taking the car, so we engaged in a bit of subterfuge. We parked the car on a side street under a tree “for the shade, so it’s not so hot in there,” my brother said. Since Dad never took that street, he wouldn’t see the damage. And he didn’t. But then the day came to load the car for my trip. When Dad announced that he wanted to help load the car, my brother thought fast. “Dad, just bring Jim’s gear to the door, and I’ll load it in the car.” It worked. When I got to school, I put the car directly into the body shop and sent my brother the bill.
It was on my trip to school that I discovered another of the Renault’s great features: it got 45 miles to the gallon! Its light weight, 1.4-liter engine. and 5-speed transmission combined for exceptional fuel economy, which was great news for someone who still thought $10 was a lot of money. A tank of gas lasted a good, long time. The tradeoff: patience behind the wheel. The buff mags all gave 0-60 times of about 15 seconds, but I swear it was more like 30.
It was 1988, and Alliances had been on the road for several years, mostly gaining a reputation for poor reliability. On my watch, at 75,000 miles it began a steady descent into unreliable beaterdom. The first repair, to the tune of $236.98, involved a failed fuel injector. I’ll never forget the price because I was a broke college student and it shocked me to the core. Next the clutch started slipping. I drove it that way until one day when the car barely made it up a slight hill, probably a 2% grade. I had a rebuilt clutch installed for $400.
One frigid day, the driver’s door handle came off in my hand when I tried to get in. The door wouldn’t latch, so I had to hold it shut as I drove to a mechanic. Did you know that no matter how hard you hold onto an unlatched driver’s-side car door, it will swing open when you make a left turn?
The cassette deck also died that year, but I couldn’t afford to replace it. As an engineering student, I had plenty of budding electrical engineers as friends. One of them thought he could fix it, so I removed it from the dash and handed it over. Weeks went by. When I asked about his progress, he just said he was working on it. More weeks went by, and finally I went to his room to check on it. I found that he’d un-soldered every diode and capacitor from the circuit boards, with each bit carefully arranged and labeled, placed on newspapers spread throughout his room. I thought my poor tape deck was a goner, but he found a single tiny electronic component that had failed, replaced it, soldered the whole thing back together and installed it in the dash. The cassette deck worked again, but from that day forward turning on the radio also turned on the parking lights.
I had my first white-knuckle driving moments in that car. On one late autumn day, a light rain had just started falling as I approached tiny Fulton, in northern Indiana. I had just passed the “Speed Limit 35” sign on the edge of town, but was still going 60 when a little old lady stepped into the road in front of me. I jerked the wheel left to avoid killing her only to find myself in the path of oncoming traffic. I jerked the wheel to the right to avoid killing myself and the car started spinning around and around, Fulton passing nauseatingly by. It came to rest about three blocks later. I came to rest inches from a new Ford Thunderbird.
Then there was the day I couldn’t avoid a giant pothole, shredded a tire and knocked the front end out of alignment. I was hopping mad and started making phone calls — somebody was going to pay for this damage, and it wasn’t going to be me. The Terre Haute city attorney declared the pothole to be within CSX Railroad’s right-of-way. It turns out that a railroad is obligated to maintain the pavement within so many feet of a crossing, so I called CSX. It took considerable tenacity, but I finally got through to someone in authority and explained my story. He didn’t flinch, he cut me a check.
After I graduated and got a job, Dad called. “Son, I’m coming in two weeks with your brother to collect the Renault. You’d better have your own car by then.” I bought a car, and I’ll tell its story soon.
My brother drove the Renault that year and most of the next. By this time it had serious issues and didn’t always start. Dad wanted to sell it to my brother for $1,000. My brother thought $500 was a fair price considering the $500 he’d already invested just to keep it running. Dad dug in and they couldn’t reach a deal. My brother finally decided to pay Dad the grand, but before he could write the check a beater Ford Maverick, driven by a teen with neither insurance nor license plates, ran a red light and T-boned the hapless Renault.
My brother wasn’t hurt, but the car was a total loss. Dad’s insurance company sent Dad a check for $1,500.
My brother still gets mad when you bring up the story of how he could have broken even on the Renault.
Next time, we’ll look at a little car I got to drive on the job one summer while I was in college.
Related CC Reading
Curbside Classic: 1986 Renault Alliance – Patina Royale
Curbside Classic: 1985 Renault Alliance Convertible – Ton Camembert á la Open Air
CC Capsule: 1983 Renault Alliance – You Deserve An Encore
Curbside Recycling: 1986 Renault Alliance – The Public Defender’s Car
Renault Alliance Convertible – Kenosha’s Last Sun Chaser
It seems strange to me that the Renault Alliance (Renault 9/11) had a reputation for unreliability in the US. This was a car made in the millions in France and Spain and they were still a common sight there many years later. But that is also the case for Volkswagen. Must be dealer related.
This is an issue that often comes up with European cars in the US. There are several reasons: the US versions were significantly more complex, with multiple emission controls systems and in this case fuel injection. The European versions had none of those at the time. Also, many US versions cars had automatics, some had air conditioning, and larger cars typically had power steering and other power accessories. Since all of these elements were essentially “added on”, these components were used only in US cars and the electrical systems and other aspects were never intended originally for all of these.
Then there’s the fact the Americans drove much more than Europeans, especially back then. Like about twice as much or more per year. And Americans typically did not take their cars in for regular “inspections” as was common in Europe. Americans tend to be a bit hard on cars, and cars like the Renaults were just too fragile for that. This is why the very rugged VW Beetle and the Japanese cars took over the market here and why Renault and a number of other European imports left the US market. The iffy dealership network only exacerbated this issue.
Having read a lot of long-term tests of various European cars in the German magazine auto-motor-und-sport back then, I can tell you that Renaults were generally at the bottom of the reliability ratings in Europe back then. It was not uncommon for them to have to have engines, transmissions and other major parts replaced during these 60,000 km tests. They really were rather fragile back then. But yes, they could be made to last, especially in areas of Spain and France where snow and salt were not used, as the rust issue was also a significant factor.
Once they get “U/S, specd” , many a ride does not hold up. Long drives in “Europe” are rather short drives in the states.
I’d guess (without proof) that there might be at least 3 issues here
1) Cars in the US must run at relatively high speeds for long drives, in a largar % than in Europe (here in South América Renaults were also thought of as very reliable)
2) Drivers 40 years ago in Europe (and South América) were used to clutching and at least were aware that driving with your foot on the clutch would have bad consequences even in a low mileage car. American drivers at the time were already fully used to automátics.
3) Finally, it’s very likely that dealers were not good enough.. they were definitrly thinner on the ground than the Big 3, and those that were AMC probably didn’t like too much these different cars
Renaults were fairly common in certain African countries where I sometimes worked as a military advisor. My personal experience with them was that they were generally reliable. Dealer & parts support was pretty well non-existent, but that wasn’t unique to Renault. Being mostly in the boonies, every make suffered from similar lack of support. Luckily there were enough Renaults around that local mechanics were often familiar enough with most of their maladies and they could usually find a derelict to scrounge parts from.
I had forgotten how long it was before you got your drivers license! And your story about hiding the accident damage from your father is one of the best ever! It is amazing to think of the kind of coping skills that are picked up by a resourceful kid because of family dynamics and the lack of money. I had remembered a shorter version of your Alliance stories and always think of you on the increasingly rare occasions when a Renault Alliance comes to mind.
Rick and I told our parents the story of the minor accident when we were in our 40s and holy COW was dad pissed. Mom had to remind him that it showed our resourcefulness.
I did expand the Alliance’s story for this telling. So much more color to add about my family’s dynamics.
Interesting!
I have had two Alliance Renault. Those cars were build in the USA. I had a Convertible and a Sedan. Both
fantastic! There was one a 2 Litre one which was very fast….beat most Volkswagen. But typical Americans
they did not like anythiing French….hence Renaults did not do well.. Although most who had one…praise them.
I had two classic French cars…a l949 Delahaye and a l951 Talbot Lago..Franay-bodied. I now drive a Citroen
DS 21 and have a Citroen SM !! Vive la France
I don’t think I knew you could get a 2.0L in these. I remember there being a 1.4 and a 1.7, and I think the 1.7 wasn’t offered in the first couple of years.
The 2.0L was in the Alliance GTA, which also had low—profile (for the time) tires and significant suspension upgrades. Fun cars. I owned two.
It’s the European Renault 11, very popular in the old continent in the 80s.
Although it was never seen in a coupe version.
The 11 was a hatchback; the Renault 9 was the 4-door sedan.
Right, caught this duo last year.
Sorry, you’re right. It’s the Renault 9. I’ve always confused the numbers between the Renault 9 and the Renault 11. With age, you get more knowledgeable 🙂
I think the coupe is smarter looking than the sedan. Dad was a coupe man for decades.
You’ve packed a lot of good stuff in here, particularly all the fun (and torment) that goes with going to college in a remote location. It’s good to hear your father would help you haul your stuff back to the car – such a concept would never have entered my father’s mind.
I had to laugh about your stating the Alliance was slow. No doubt they were. In high school (which was quite rural, 12 miles from my house, and 43 in my graduating class) I was driving home one day in my father’s ’84 F-150 with the 300 straight six. I got slowed down and a girl in an Alliance was behind me. My foot was on the firewall and that Ford was making a lot of commotion and no locomotion. That girl in the Alliance nailed it and went around me like I was sitting still. Utter humiliation.
Dad was extremely happy to see me go, not because he wanted to be rid of me, but because it had been his dream to send me to college my entire life. He wanted to be involved every step of the way.
Another entertaining story, especially about being a struggling college student At first glance my first two years of college appeared like I was privileged (1969-71). My parents had retired in NC during my high school years, and I hated NC. As my 16th birthday approached, I kept missing the bus so I had to be driven to school. Any school activities, I had to be driven. I only showed interest in attending high school football games at night, so I had to be driven. On my 16th birthday, Dad took me out of school to get my drivers license. I passed and was given the keys to Moms 1963 T-Bird as she no longer drove due to health reasons. Independence for me and Dad. I left for college in 1969, off to Miami and geographically as far away from NC as I could justify. I followed my brothers escape as he had moved to LA to attend Art Center and graduated in Automotive Design the same month I graduated from high school. We both had nice cars (brother had a Mustang), both lived off campus, Dad paid for everything so in that respect we were privileged. The rub was Dad had no concept of the expense it took for art supplies, I was in architecture, or living in Miami or LA. Our grades were most important or he would hold back the monthly living expense stipend. We were forbidden to get a job, grades first, and I don’t know how my brother managed his rigorous education but I valet parked at a club on Miami Beach. Working nights running my ass off jockeying cars go get tips from mobsters and call girls, so many sleepless nights completing design project’s. Still, I was so poor that for two years I could only afford one meal a day, I lived in a rooming house in one room with a shared bath on the edge of Biscayne Bay, owned and run my a German ex-Nazi. Occasionally he would offer me a home cooked meal, all the time questioning me about my Dad’s Air Force career. But my daily diet for almost two years was a Burger King Whooper, med. fries, small Coke for less than $2.00, only one meal and at night. At least I kept stylishly thin. Those burger “Whooper’s” were much bigger then what you buy today.
I had a nice car, a parent paying out-of-state tuition, but I don’t miss my youth. It was hard work then and even more hard work now for students trying to afford their education today.
Sounds like you had overall both a great and formative time during those years!
You’re fortunate your dad would drive you places. Mine absolutely would not, under any circumstances. I took the city bus a lot.
I can relate to your experience after coming home from your junior year in Europe, but as a parent. As I mentioned last time, our older son went to Austria for his junior year, and he took very full advantage of his unrestrained freedoms there. He could drink legally, and hung out evenings at a beer stube that was popular with high school age kids. This was common then, and considered perfectly ok, as none of them ever drove. Stumbling home late at night on foot was harmless.
Our house here in Eugene is fairly small, and having him move back after being gone that year was painful for all of us, not just him. He had lots of attitude and undoubtedly was not happy to be back. It wasn’t so much like we put any major restrictions on him, it was just that the whole setup was so much better in Austria, especially the part of him being on a very excellent fencing team that got to travel all over Europe to meets. I felt sorry for him, but also us. It’s no fun having a surly 17 year old sharing a fairly small house.
The summer after he graduated I moved in into a little cottage in a lot behind our house, a former garage. He helped me fix it up, which was a bonding experience. We were both very motivated to get it done and everyone sighed with relief when he moved in. And I bought him a $400 1981 Mazda 626 with a stick for his first car. I had to teach him how to drive a stick in it, which went pretty well.
Maybe it should be a senior year abroad?
In reading your story I can see very well why it would be hard for the family to re-integrate — on both sides. My parents managed it simply: you will comply with how it’s always been, and we will hear no complaints and brook no attitude. Period.
I hope that in time your son felt gratitude, on the balance, for his Austrian experience. I think you took excellent steps to re-form your relationship with him. A+ fathering.
My father bought one of these, nearly new .
Apparently it had been wrecked badly in the front, written off as a total loss, then purchased as scrap and poorly rebuilt .
All he ever cared about was the low initial price .
It chewed up tires and the front end was so badly twisted no alignment shop could make it right .
I’ve driven quite a few French cars and like them quite a bit but not enough to own one .
-Nate
These were so delicate that I can’t imagine how you’d ever put one back together right after a bad front-end bash.
I know!
For those who missed the documentary about AMC on PBS a few weeks ago. there were bumps in the relationship between AMC and Renault.
I usually go to the local AMC show in Livonia. Former AMC styling guys Vince Geraci, who passed last September, and Frank Pasco were regular attendees, so I had several opportunities to chat with them. One thing Vince told me, and it came up in the documentary, was that the Renault people refused to accept any input from the AMC people, regarding the design of the Alliance. Vince particularly mentioned, to me, that the cooling system was completely inadequate for US driving conditions. Frank also relayed to me a more colorful version of the story he told in the documentary, about how his boss leveraged Frank’s French language skills to spy on what the Renault people were saying among themselves. Another regular attendee at the show, who has since passed, was parts manager at an AMC dealer. He told me how he made a fortune selling Alliance parts. He said that, if there was someone waiting when he arrived at the dealer in the morning, the guy was almost certainly there for an Alliance part. On the other hand, Frank had an Encore, for about 8 years. He said it was fine. He had bought it at Coon Brothers, a Nash/AMC dealer since before there was dirt, and a good one. Could be that the combination of having it serviced at a good dealer, who also knew that Frank worked for AMC, played a part in the car’s longevity.
All this leads into my Renault 18 story. Last September, there was a French car owner’s meetup at the Gilmore. Six Citroens showed up, no Pugs, and one lone Renault an 87 Alliance convert. I was chatting with the Alliance owner, and he said he had been really hoping to see an 18 wagon. I have not seen an 18 since the mid 80s, but I recalled to him, a particularly attractive example I had seen, that was dark green, with a saddle tan interior.
A couple weeks later, one of the guys on the Renault page on Facebook, posted what had just turned up in Facebook Marketplace: an 81 18 wagon, dark green, with a saddle tan interior. It was in Lapeer, about 90 miles from casa del Steve. Allegedly parked in dry storage since 1991. Body and interior both looked excellent, in the pix. 49K miles on the clock. $1850 asking price. An acquaintance of mine knows of a shop that likes working on French cars, near Montreal, and he offered to trailer the 18 to Montreal, so that Andre’s shop could get it sorted out. I started thinking, which is always dangerous. How much would it cost to clean 35 year old gas out of the fuel system, and US spec 18s had Bosch injection? Once the car was running, we then discover why it was parked. My prime suspect was the automatic transmission, as Renault automatic boxes did not have a great reputation. After everything is sorted out, I would have an 18 with the 1.6 aluminum Cleon, and a three speed automatic. I had a bit of wheel time in an 18 with that powertrain, in 81. Slow, so slow, that, with the 3 speed trans, I’m not sure I would be comfortable slamming it up US23 to Frankenmuth, to take it to NoWo. Fortunately, someone else snapped up that car, within a couple weeks, bringing consideration to a halt.
Ben is almost as much of a provocateur as I am, so suggested “import one yourself”, I found a candidate on Car & Classic. in Colmar, France, near the German border. Looked really nice. Listing had lots of pix of the underbody. The car was remarkably clean for it’s age. Best of all, it had the 2.0 Douvrin, so decent power, and it was a runner. Also, a 5 speed, instead of the fragile automatic, a Weber carb, instead of 80s EFI. no crazy US 80s emissions controls and no A/C. Asking 5,000 Euros. Only fault the owner disclosed is it needs new rear wheel brake cylinders. A quick look on eBay showed plenty of remanufactured cylinders, and a few new, OEM, Girling, cylinders. Car & Classic gave me a quote for shipment, including US import duty, of $7100. Ben said “I know a guy”. Ben’s contact whose business is renting cars for movie productions, and routinely imports from Europe, quoted me $5000. Ben reached out to Andre about getting it sorted out, and Andre was on board with the project. It would take an extra big pair pf brass clangers to buy an old car, sight unseen, from a stranger, in another country, so I reached out to another of Ben’s contacts, in England, about hiring him to go get eyes on the car. Two days later, as I was waiting to hear back from Gary, the listing was pulled from Car & Classic. It was still on Leboncoin, but Leboncoin does not facilitate sales between the US and France. End of project.
This was the car.
Sounds like your ownership of an 18 has just not been meant to be!
Sounds like your ownership of an 18 has just not been meant to be!
Yup. I tried to explain how my guardian angel operates to Ben. For years, I lusted for a Fiat 500 Cabrio. Pulled the trigger on one I found on Carvana. Had the money in the bank. Had the delivery appointment set. A couple days later, the 1982 vintage A/C at casa del Steve gave up. $8000,evaporated from my bank account, so I called Carvana to cancel the purchase of the Fiat. Things like that, both large and small, have been happening to me for decades, too many to all be a “coincidence”.
“Take that, Dad! You wouldn’t handle it, so I did.”
Story. Of. My. Life.
Solidarity, friend.
Yikes, your father seems to have been very strict and uncompromising. Have heard that from a few others and wonder what the story is. My father was pretty accommodating while I was at home which was till almost 19. Never set rules as he knew I was responsible to set my own rules and stick to them.
Your comment about a 50 mile round trip commute being long made me chuckle. Out here people are making the commute from places like Sacramento or Modesto to the Bay Area. That is roughly 80-85 miles one way. My nephew’s wife makes a commute from West Point (yes, in California) to San Francisco at 143 miles one way. Only one round trip as she spends 3 nights with a friend. She is a cosmetologist and if you knew what she gets for one appointment you would all be stunned. I was as it is on the scale of a doctor’s office visit.
He needed a great deal of routine and order. Honestly, I think he was autistic, and less than high order took a lot out of him. He worked hard to conserve his energy.
He was 5x the father his father was and I try to remember that.
Yeah, South Bend in the 80s, 20 minutes was a long drive.
Quite a story!
First, I thought I knew every special edition model that year, but the Motor Trend Car of the Year Edition Alliance is a new one for me. Looks like it was “officially” called the Alliance MT (brochure photo below). I think the charcoal-colored body and wheels make the car look pretty good, but the “Car of the Year” dash plaque is dumb beyond belief.
Seems like this was actually a decent car for your family – no more than decent, but still, not too bad. Though it’s probably a good thing that your brother didn’t get to try his luck on keeping it running for a few more years!
We all talked fondly about it for years. It was second to the Matador for us, in terms of being a favorite.
The quote about your dad calling you and saying that he was coming to “collect the Renault” is kind of chilling. Maybe he didn’t intend it that way (although I’m guessing from what you’ve written he very much did), but that kind of simple directive that is stated in a way that is not to be argued with and that seems largely to ignore what YOUR life might have been and what you might have needed the Renault for…yeah, my dad could be like that too. It was not something, when it happened, that endeared him much to me as a human being; which, by the time I was in college, is how I thought about my father. Not as someone who had a kind of ineffable parental control over me, but rather just as some other person. And I was not inclined to appreciating being talked down to like that.
On a somewhat different note, I was wondering if your article was going to loop back somehow to the “Breaking Free” idea expressed in the title…which reminds me of the film “Breaking Away”. Breaking Away also took place in Indiana. That film was a kind of key coming of age film for me and a handful of my pals at the time (we graduated from high school in 1979, the year that came out). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breaking_Away
Great article Jim!
It’s appalachian parenting, direct and leaving you short. I watched my whole extended family on his side behave this way.
It’s important to note that the plan always was that my brother would get the Renault after I graduated, and his senior year at Notre Dame was about to begin. I was lying low to maximize my time but I knew a call like this was coming.
Breaking free in this article meant that I was finally free of the restrictions I had grown up with.
Which is what Breaking Away is about too.
Ironically (??) the actor Daniel Stern who is one of the main characters in that film is actually from Bethesda, MD and graduated from the high school right next door to my Bethesda high school.
I should actually watch that movie someday, especially given that I’m in Indiana. You’d think I’d have seen it by now.
Sold my pair of ’83 Renault 9’s a couple of months ago – got what I paid for them too.
They were pretty reliable over the 15 years I owned them but my annual mileage is very low.
It’s remarkable what driving a car only now and then can do for its longevity.
Rented one touring California. 1100 miles of turmoil. Only good thing about it was the fuel mileage. The Alliance made me realize there were cars worse than the Pinto my wife had in college.
I had a Pinto too. Next week.
Very open and honest tale.
Interesting to hear your account and the other comments about French car reliability and fragility. Those broadly chime with UK experiences of Renaults, Fiats, Citroens and others, but not German cars. Bets not to mention 1970s and 1980s British (BL et al) cars…..but there are always outliers. <y wife had three Renault Clios from 1991 to 2008 and never had any issue on any of them; I had 2 Renault 19s (the successor to the 9 and 11 Alliance and Encore) – one was solid but the other had a few issues, notably the cooling system and power steering pump.
My best Dad story on car damage – I filled up his Chrysler Alpine and flicked the filler flap shut, I thought. I hadn't, so I knocked off with my knee walking past it to get back into the car. Got a serious "take more care, look after stuff, what if it was yours?" lecture from Dad in his best school teacher mode (he was a high school headteacher). Drove home in silence. 2 hours later he apologised, clearly at Mum's request. "She said I couldn't have been worse if you had crashed into something properly!" And we fixed it back on the driveway.
I remember a few British cars imported here in the 70s. Electrics were the common issue, but none of them was reliable overall.
Those broadly chime with UK experiences of Renaults, Fiats, Citroens and others, but not German cars.
I have a theory why VW survived in the US, when the other mass market brands failed: Bosch electrics were just a bit better than the rest. While Lucas joke books abound, if you own a French car, you learn other names, like Paris Rhone, Marchal, Ducellier. The Marchal alternator in my R5 went west. The problem was the voltage regulator. The regulator was mounted externally, on the back of the alternator, designed to be easily replaceable. But no-one in the US carried just the regulator. So a regulator fault was addressed by replacing the entire alternator.
Here’s the regulator, on a US spec R5. Right out in the open. Easy to replace. But, even when the cars were being sold new, in the US, that regulator, by itself, was unobtanium.
Nowadays, that wouldn’t even be an issue anymore, given that there are no mechanics left anymore. Just parts replacers. Maybe, alot of that has to do with the amount of effort needed to even get to a regulator in a modern vehicle. Replacing the entire unit would avoid a customer coming back one day claiming that a spun bearing was implanted, while the regulator was replaced, back then.
I was lucky to have a Paris-Rhone in mine, never having had problems with it. The only electrical problem I’ve ever had with mine was with its Ducellier electronic ignition module, one morning when it didn’t want to fire. I didn’t want to fork out a fortune for a falable replacement. So, I converted it over to a junkyard-harvested distributor with a set of points in it.
Not being able to obtain a regulator is embarassing for a company attempting to re-enter a market lost because of a poor reputation. Well, that’s now AMC’s problem. So, no big loss?
Replacing a French alternator with either a Bosch or Delco-Remy dosen’t look like a major ordeal. Opels were equipped with Delco-Remys made in France
I really enjoy your stories Jim, although they’re not always pleasant they are always interesting.
I’d say you did better than most with your Alliance. I never drove one but I did help replace a water pump on one, the new part was shockingly expensive. Poor reliability coupled with costly replacement parts is a bad combination that probably sent many Alliances to the scrap yard early.
As for your father, well he was a better one than his father, and you in turn better than him. That’s the way it has to go for the world to get better.
You think this was unpleasant, brace yourself, divorce and death are ahead in future installments. 🙁
While I had the car at school it started running rough. A classmate was a happy wrencher, owned a 38 Chevy that he drove daily, so I consulted him. “Probably needs a tuneup,” he said. “Buy the following things and I’ll come over and do it.”
Turns out spark plug #4 was so hard to reach that previous tune-uppers gave up. It was 4x blacker than the rest – and a different brand. Classmate got it replaced, though, and the car ran fine after.
Had a Girlfriend that had one of these, but the Auto! You think your 5 sp was slow? Pfft. Such a PC of Garbage, these were.
Cool story, However.. I was kinda confused when I read this line:
“Did you know that no matter how hard you hold onto an unlatched driver’s-side car door, it will swing open when you make a left turn?”
Wouldn’t the Driver’s door swing open during a Right turn, rather than a left? (I had to double check to make sure you weren’t in “some foreign Country”).
While I drove the Renault, the girlfriend I had then also drove one, an automatic. You’re right, it was glacially slow.
I meant left turn. The door’s tendency will be to stay on its plane, so it swings open. On a right turn, that pressure actually forces the door into the car harder.
For a while I have been wondering, why every time I see a car in traffic with a burnt out head- or taillight, it was ALWAYS some French make. And a lot of them! Recently, I read an article about common faults in different cars. In that article, a mechanic said that the French cars never have silicone covers over wire connectors. The result being various electrical problems caused by moisture entering the connectors.