Coming out of Angers on the dual carriageway this afternoon, on cruise at 112ks or thereabouts, noticed a lot of dead insects on my windscreen and gave it a wash. Not to much avail as there was no soap in the washer fluid.
Of course I had seen the Citroen people carrier sitting 20 feet off my tail but I figured it was his lookout. Either keep a relaxed distance or overtake if you aren't an idiot.
The Citroen immediately overtook and washed its own screen in front of us before drawing slowly away into the distance or turning off or something.
He didn't have any soap in his fluid either.
Damn Froggy cheapskate.
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I think the really scary tailgaters are the Italians, 120kph and you can't see the front half of their bonnet they are so close.
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Autostrada past Turin in rush hour is one thing. Totally empty and straight dual or even single carriageways are another.
I don't think this tailgating is alarming. I just think it's annoying and strangely thick considering how intellectual the French quite often are. I despise it utterly and wouldn't dream of not washing my windscreen because some idiot has chosen to drive too close.
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French automotive masonic hand-shake that AC !
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Twenty-odd years ago, I had a job which involved me flying to Italy a couple of times a month to visit factories. It was necessary to collect and deliver stuff in hired cars. Usually I ended up with something very basic unless I got a free upgrade. Often in those days they were Pandas which I then proceeded to overload to the point where they wouldn't cope with going uphill very willingly. I recall two occasions when I'd perhaps ambitiously decided to overtake a line of trucks on the Autostrada only to find myself on an uphill stretch in third gear screaming the little engine to get past when I felt what I charitably assume to have been a friendly push from behind by a more powerful car. They both shoved me along until I reached the head of the queue and then dropped back enough to let me pull in.
:-)
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...They both shoved me along...
Reminds me of the push start instructions in the handbook of my Rover 3500 auto.
Pad the rear of the car with an old tyre, get another car to push you along at about 15mph, put it in drive, and kickdown hard.
Towing was not recommended presumably because the V8 engine would make the car lurch forward violently when it fired.
I'd have thought it would have been simpler to use a long tow rope.
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Can you push start an auto?
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...Can you push start an auto?...
Martin,
My post above is obviously not very clear.
Push starting the Rover 3500 auto is what the handbook told you to do.
Towing an auto over any distance, by which I mean miles, was always deemed to be a bad thing because the oil in the gearbox wouldn't circulate, leading to seized bearings.
If we had to recover a broken down auto, it was always a trailer, or a suspend tow - suspending the driven wheels, off course.
I once dragged in a Jaguar XJ6 when neither was possible.
The answer was to scrabble underneath and disconnect the propshaft, which is only four bolts.
The loose end of the propshaft was held away from the road using welding wire.
Welding wire was very useful stuff to have on a breakdown tender.
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I was once hoofing it back from Paderborn trying to catch a ferry at Calais. It was raining hard and there had been an accident on the A16 so I'd made a detour via Gravelines.
There was standing water about half an inch deep on the road and I was going as fast as I dare, about 60mph. A small French van was stuck on my bumper and kept trying to overtake. Every time he pulled out he lost the path I was clearing for him and ended up 20yds further back.
He never gave up and eventually overtook as I slowed down on the outskirts of Calais.
French national pride restored.
Kevin...
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Now the French don't speed like they used to (speed cameras and tighter drink-drive rules), tailgating is the only way you know you're in France. I do hope they keep it up - part of their national character!
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I think they want to have a closer look at this GB - which they translate as either "Grand Bete" (silly ass) or "Gueule de Bois" (hangover). A name for F comes readily to mind but should perhaps not be quoted on a site which may be family viewing.
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They are even worse at night, believe me. And if you want to turn off a main road, my advice is to start indicating at least 500m before the junction - even then they won't notice your indicator is on.
re the previous post: there's a pic of a UK reg Volvo doing the rounds on forums in France - reg no GR 05 CON, which in French is GROS CON - fat idiot.
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Another for my phrasebook.
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It's all revenge for "Citroen presse"..
(Cartoon of a Light 15 closely followed by mustchioed gent in open top 1929 Blower Bentley)
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Nice one. The French are slightly kinder to the Germans. D = doryphore, ladybird or Colorado beetle, presumably a reference to the national colours.
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The other thing they do on the roads here, other than the irksome tailgating, is the opposite thing of accelerating, or seeming to accelerate, or perhaps just allowing their road speed to creep up, when one is passing. It may be an illusion though. The car isn't a slingshot special - I can see why people want those - and I am beginning to feel my age in this matter of overtaking when you are on the wrong side of the car, a bit less quick and fluid and gung-ho than of yore.
We went to the Cornwall-like north coast of the huge Breton peninsula today. To a place, then a fishing village, that my wife visited with her parents in the forties, when she was about six. She couldn't recognise for sure the house we think we were told was the house she had stayed in. No name by now, street numbers, and a lot more houses built however in similar style on what she remembers as a cornfield.
I had a similar experience visiting Polzeath which I lived in briefly during the war. Places change and develop and fill up with rich folk who like the views and the landscape. Cornwall has got much more like that eh Dog my dear fellow?
The car's still only doing 35.5mpg or thereabouts. I blame having to floor it up to 80 sometimes to get past these people who apparently speed up (but it may be an illusion) and passages at 73 on cruise. That's too fast for economy. What it likes is 58 on the clock. It's American (made in Mexico I think).
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Hope you're enjoying it all, AC, even allowing for the irksome habits of the locals?
The reason they accelerate as you pull out to pass is very simple - that's the first time they have noticed you are there.
They really, really don't look in their mirrors! Until recently it was possible to buy a new car in France with only one door mirror, or even none. They don't see the need for them. It's true!
If you follow any rural French driver except the very young or - especially - young female, they will dawdle all day until they happen to look in the mirror and notice you are there, when they will floor the throttle and try to hare away, regardless of other factors.
Bons vacances! Have you found Enferatu Motors yet?
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Absolutely loving it of course, oysters, cheap booze, centres historiques and all.
I have been wishing the awful enteratu was around because he once helped me post some pictures. Now I have more. I have pictures of the entrance to the bourg whose patron saint I must be, with the saint's car an apparition behind the 30 sign - 30 kilometres you British thugs not your huge fat dangerous English miles - and another in which what may be the saint also appears.
But alas, I can't cope with the standard photo-handling guff on my new computer even enough to send the pix to the webmaster and ask him to post it. I've tried but I can't.
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French tailgating sounds rather naughty to staid Englishmen.
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>> revenge for "Citroen presse"..
Sounds like Russell Brockbank, great motoring cartoonist of my youth whose vintage and PVT cars driven in anger were a joy to behold.
I don't know whether Brockbank got in first - perhaps he did actually - but the artwork called Citroen Presse that I remember is by a fashionable sculptor, French I think. It was a yellow Citroen squashed into a cube, straight from breaker's yard onto a plinth, chapeau!
Can't help wondering how much he got for it if anyone bought it. Bet they did.
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The Brockbank cartoon "Citroen Presse" appears on the home page of his website:
www.russellbrockbank.com/
It is one of six or seven in a slide show which I don't think you can pause, presumably so as not to 'give the shop away'.
The rest are well worth a look, including the guy in a vintage Bentley who strikes a match for his pipe on the roof of some tasteless Yankee tin-top as his driver passes it.
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I 'acquired' a book of Brockbank cartoons from my dad in my youth, I think its filed away in the 'man-wardrobe' (garage). Must dig it out.
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French tailgating - Old Navy
