Was traveling the US for 4 weeks (CA, NV, AZ) an haven’t seen a single french car but many german and japanese. Do french cars have a bad reputation in the US?

39 comments

  2. It’s less that they have a bad reputation and more that they aren’t sold here at all. The big three French automakers all pulled out by like the 1970s.

  3. I honestly don’t know why. My best guess is that it is already a pretty saturated car market here. To go through the work of branding, building, etc just seems like a huge risk.

  4. We did have Peugeot up until the early 90s I believe, and Renault up until the late 80s. They all pulled out of the US market. I don’t think a brand new French car is available to an American today.

  5. They did a poor job of designing cars that appealed to or met regulations for the North American market.

    Peugeot pulled out in 1991 after safety and other regulatory concerns. Renault partnered with doomed AMC, effectively ending their US sales. Citroen never gained a foothold against heavy competition and was gone in the 70s after decades of struggling.

  6. I am not an expert but I know Peugeot and Renault tried to enter the US market sometime in the 70’s, quickly developed a reputation for being unreliable and were never able to get over it. They stuck it out through to the late 80’s, in fact I want to say the last Renault sold was a 1990 model year, but the damage was done.

    Almost no one 35 or younger in the US has heard of Citroën, Peugeot or Renault unless they are into cars, or they know someone who is and was forced to watch Top Gear.

  7. French cars aren’t really sold in the US, its not that they have no reputation so much as no distribution.

  8. The French used to sell cars in America. They pulled out decades ago from a combination of not wanting to design cars to meet American regulations and what they did design was usually overpriced and underperforming compared to the other offerings.

    I also suspect France’s performance in the second world war made a whole generation of Americans skeptical of their manufacturing capabilities.

  10. Back in the day, they were sold in the US. A teacher had a Citroen, a friend had a Renault “Le Car,” and a boss had a Peugeot. In American Graffiti, one of the characters had a 2CV and Detective Columbo drove a Peugeot. I suspect they were largely displaced by Japanese, and later, Korean brands, with respect to imports.

  12. Because neither Renault or Peugeot have been sold in the US since the 1980’s, Citroen not since the 70’s, and even then all were VERY niche brands.

  14. A lady who worked for my dad in the early 80s had a diesel Peugeot. The acceleration on that thing made it dangerous to get on the freeway. I took it in for service for her once and remember having the pedal on the floor at the light and accelerated like I had just taken my foot off the brake in a normal car. Needless to say, they were not popular. The French have also made some of the oddest looking cars I’ve ever seen.

  15. Not a bad reputation, but they aren’t available. They don’t really have anything spectacular that sets them apart that would make it worthwhile for someone to go out of their way to ship one here.

  16. French cars had a really poor reputation so their manufacturers stopped selling them. To this day they still have a poor reputation so they haven’t even tried to start selling them here.

  17. There were Renault dealerships in the 1980s, but the cars had a terrible reputation for reliability.

  18. I have never seen a French car outside of visiting a French-speaking territory. Why import something like a Citroen when you can have a much better car like a Japanese, German, Korean or Italian-made one?

  19. Had a neighbor as a kid with a Renault, looked like a big toy car driving around in the 90s. It was a model 4 from god knows when, maybe the late 60s.

    They weren’t really popular way back and I don’t believe you can buy them in NA.

  20. I have seen maybe a half dozen peugots on the road in my whole life, they aren’t sold here anymore

  24. Honestly if someone put a gun to my head and told me to name a French car I’d tell them to just pull the trigger. You could give me all the time in the world and I wouldn’t be able to tell you of a single car manufacturer from France lol

  26. Also the Japanese, Koreans, and Germans realized A long while ago that both the parts and assembly supply chains needed to be primarily here to be profitable. Hence why I’m less than 3 hours drive from Honda, Kia, Mercedes, Volkswagen, Toyota, Mazda, and Hyundai plants depending on the direction.

    Also a Japanese car company signs my checks so I’m biased. Haha

  27. They used to sell Peugeot, Citroen and Renault in the US but they left the market in the 80s/90s. They mainly could not compete with the Japanese brands, especially when it came to reliability and such metrics.

  30. I had a Renault Le Car in the 80s. It was a piece of sh*t car and impossible to get repaired.

  31. IMO, they have a terrible reputation. To the very end in 2021 my dad would rail about how shitty his Renault Dauphine was in the late 50s. Some of the stories he would tell described a car that was comically shitty

  33. All the labels in the French cars are in French. I kept turning on the heater when I really just wanted the radio on.

    (For the humor impaired, that was a joke)

  34. It must have been a business choice on the French car brands’ part. From what I’ve seen in Europe, they definitely aren’t trying to fit American sensibilities.

  36. One of the appeals of French cars was their weirdness. “Quirky” is a word that’s throw around a lot when describing them.

    And some of them are weird little fun things. But most Americans just couldn’t get over just how terrible they are as cars.

  38. Why can’t you find Cowtown Night of the Living BBQ sauce in France? There’s no marketing, local tastes vary, distribution issues, saturated market, etc. Same reasons.

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