The C15 represents a time when a vehicle was a tool. I feel vehicles want to turn into a subscription service these days.
I still see these running in rural Spain and France, usually held together with wire and hope, clocking like what 400k+ km? The XUD diesel engines are practically unkillable. They have no ECU to brick, no adblue sensors to fail and put the car into limp mode and thankfully none of those DRM locked headlights.
The argument for the countryside need of a modern SUV usually cites reliability and safety, and in 2026, modern complexity is the enemy of reliability. If your C15 breaks down in a field, you can fix it with a wrench. If your Range Rover breaks down in a field because a sensor in the air suspension noticed a voltage variance...you are stranded until a tow truck takes it to a dealer.
> The C15 represents a time when a vehicle was a tool. I feel vehicles want to turn into a subscription service these days.
I wonder how differently cars would be built, if instead of maximizing for value extraction and crap nobody needs, they instead were optimized for utility and maintenance (and sure, fuel economy, aerodynamics and some sane environmental stuff). Like take the C15 and add 2-4 decades of manufacturing and safety improvements, while keeping it simple and utilitarian.
That would be the absolute dream engineering brief. If I actually sit down and design that vehicle, it would have something like this. List, off the top of my head.
1. You keep the modern metallurgy and the crumple zones. You keep ABS and basic traction control because they are solved problems that save lives without needing cloud connectivity.
2. Instead of a 2000 USD proprietary touchscreen that will be obsolete in 3 years, the dashboard could be just a double DIN slot and a heavy-duty, universal tablet mount with a 100W USB-C PD port. The car provides the power and the speakers and my phone provides the maps and music. When the tech improves, you upgrade your phone, not your dashboard.
3. Nobs and buttons instead of touchscreens like VW has done recently, if my memory serves me right.
The tragedy is that regulations in the EU and North America make this incredibly difficult to sell. The sane environmental stuff you mentioned has morphed into a requirement for deeply integrated electronic oversight. But I genuinely believe there is a massive, silent majority of drivers waiting for a car that promises nothing other than to start every morning and never ask for a software update.
> I wonder how differently cars would be built, if instead of maximizing for value extraction and crap nobody needs, they instead were optimized for utility and maintenance (and sure, fuel economy, aerodynamics and some sane environmental stuff).
Auto manufacturers already have stripped-down base models of their entry-level vehicles. Many have commercial versions of their vehicles, especially trucks and vans, that are stripped down.
The stripped down base models don't sell well.
Remember how the internet was clamoring for an iPhone Mini? Whenever there were complaints about modern cell phones, you could find what looked like unanimous agreement that a smaller iPhone would be the golden ticket. Then Apple made an iPhone Mini, and it did not sell well.
The same happens with vehicles. Whenever you find threads complaining about modern vehicles it seems unanimous that modern vehicles have too many things consumers don't want and we'd be better off with simple base models. Yet simple base models do exist already and they don't sell well. Real consumers look at their $20,000 Nissan Versa and realize that spending an extra $1-2K on amenities isn't going to change their monthly payment much.
There is a lot of precedent for this. The Tata Nano was an Indian micro car that was small, low-power, and had bare minimum amenities. It was under $5K USD in inflation-adjusted dollars.
It was discontinued due to low demand because sales declined steadily year over year. Nobody wanted it.
It’s the ford transit connect. Car makers can’t make money on them because a) for personal use they are uncomfortable and b) commercial buyers drive them a million miles before replacing them.
The margin in cars is in the luxury. And for most personal buyers they’ll get as much luxury as they can afford because they are contemplating their monthly cost over total price and leather seats cost $80 more per month on a $600 monthly, they’ll splurge.
Safety improvement means larger crumple zones, reinforcement, etc... Which mean a bigger and heavier vehicle if you want to keep the same capacity. That in turn means a more powerful engine, brakes, wheels and tyres, etc... further increasing the size and weight of the vehicle. This is an exponential factor.
Fuel economy and environmental stuff (which are linked) come with tighter engine control for better combustion and cleaner exhaust. It means tighter tolerances so simple tools may be less appropriate, and electronics.
And there are comfort elements that are hard to pass nowadays: A/C, power steering, door lock and windows. Mandatory safety equipment like airbags and ABS. Even simple cars like what Dacia makes are still bigger, heavier and more complex than older cars like the C15, they don't really have a choice.
Modularity would be great too. Standardized connectors and outer dimensions for engines even between brands. Medium, large, small. You don't need 100 different types. Meanwhile, all this has been overtaken by the need to get away from fossil fuels as soon as we practically can. Oil should not be valued based on the cost of pumping it out of the ground but based on the cost of creating a liter of it from raw materials (CO2, lots of energy).
Modern cars break down less than older cars -- they are more reliable, not less. They generate more power, with better emissions. They have a wealth of creature comforts and features beyond what 1980s cars had.
Modern engines are generally more reliable, yes. And galvanised steel and aluminium has helped chassis' and bodies last longer too. I think the 'sweet spot' has passed for most car categories though, the last being city cars when they got mandatory infotainment systems towards the end of the 2010s.
Declining service revenue has been a problem for car dealerships for a long time. EVs are only making it even harder as their maintenance needs are reduced further.
This is another topic where people look back on the past with rose colored glasses. At the risk of downvotes, this happens a lot on HN like in threads where people speak about their pre-SSD era computers as being faster and snappier than modern machines. I recently found my old laptop in storage and booted it up. I remember loving how fast it was at the time and being glad I spent extra for the fastest model at the time, but oh boy was it slow relative to anything I use today.
> If your C15 breaks down in a field, you can fix it with a wrench.
I could. My wife couldn't.
Also, let's not forget the creature comforts of modern cars... rear seats, airbags, sound insulation, power steering, automatic transmissions, 4wd.
Living in the country, tool-vehicles are very useful. This is typically a beat up old 2wd pickup truck (lower is easier to load) with an 8-ft bed (so you can load full sheets of plywood) and a single cab (so you can get an 8-ft bed). My buddy down the street has one and I borrow it all the time. But you'd never take the family anywhere with this thing. It basically spends its entire life going back and forth to Lowes.
Because she doesn't drive a C15. Believe me, rural french women _will_ fix a C15. There's nothing to break down anyways, the engine is happy to run on distilled corn and melted rubber for oil, the suspension is what suspension, three tires ought to be enough for everyone.
> rear seats,
There's rear benches for you whole family and space for your kids to play around in the back while you're driving, what more do you want ?
Grab a phase 3, it has power steering. Or get stronger arms. Or stop trying to steer while you're not moving forward.
> automatic transmissions
You don't need automatic transmissions, you need to learn how to drive stick. The C15 has the added benefit that you don't really have a proper range to change gears, it'll just go in. Actually you don't even need to clutch, just jam the thing.
>4wd
Absolutely useless for 100% of the usages the average american makes of it. If it can drive through mud while carrying cows, it will handle anything you have to throw at it. 4WD sure is a nice thing to make you pay for more gas though.
>Living in the country, it's very useful to own a tool-vehicle. This is typically a beat up old 2wd pickup truck (lower is easier to load) with an 8-ft bed (so you can load full sheets of plywood) and a single cab (so you can get an 8-ft bed). My buddy down the street has one and I borrow it all the time. But you'd never take the family anywhere with this thing. It basically spends its entire life going back and forth to Lowes.
Alright, all kidding aside though: the US is literally the only country in the world that considers pickup trucks as a good utility vehicle: they are the most dogshit type of vehicle you could own for anything, and that includes your sheets of plywood. Pickup trucks are not used by anyone serious anywhere else in the world. Need to carry a bunch of crap ? Buy a busted Renault Master (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renault_Master) and it has the added benefit of you being able to buy your plywood in crazy situations like the tiniest bits of rain.
The US's obsession for pickup trucks is the sign of a deeply unserious society.
The Toyota Hilux makes for a good vehicle to mount weapons in the back, but please see a lawyer about the legality of mounting an M60 at the back of your car if you're not living in Afghanistan
This article is comparing a C15 new in 1984 vs a secondhand one today. Really, the C15 represents a time when taxes were ~20% lower and there was a workable steel industry in Europe (which destroyed certain environments, especially around the Ruhrgebiet, whether the exact location was in France, Belgium or Germany). Oh and one major problem the C15 does have is that despite those stats, it is considered to NOT meet emission standards (due to age), and so you cannot enter many cities in one. You can enter with a Berlingo.
There is still a "C15" by the way. It's even less ugly. It's called the Berlingo [1]. Cheapest version is 24000euro + tax, or 35000 + tax for the hybrid version. Let's say in practice it'll run you 30000 euro.
In other words, after tax and counting inflation, let's summarize that since 1984, European cars have about doubled in price. Wages in the EU have gone up about 2x, after inflation.
You have to work 30000/2600 (avg wage per month, euros, in France) = just shy of an entire year of work if you invested 100% of your wage into the car. So let's say 2 years of work.
(due to the EU strongly opposing equal wages across the EU, there is a very large difference between average wage in France and, say, Greece. VERY large, more than 100%)
In 1977, you would have 4900FF average wage in France (in French Francs), and the C15 cost 62000FF. So, just about 12 months at 100% average wage, or let's say 2 years or work, saving up.
So, it even costs about the same.
And, sadly, one is forced to admit that when it comes to European cars, this is a pretty damn good result for that company. Most EU brands have done far worse.
> Oh and one major problem the C15 does have is that despite those stats, it is considered to NOT meet emission standards (due to age), and so you cannot enter many cities in one.
At least in Germany, due to it's age it would classify as a historic vehicle (number plate with an H) and be exempt from emission standards.
My driving skills are probably below average. I really like that my car warns me of zebra crossings and can follow the car in front of me with a safe distance.
Many of the modern car features are just useless marketing fluff, but there is some really good progress too.
I’ve got two cars that I drive regularly, a modern day BMW with all the bells and whistles, and an almost 20 year old Honda
Acty Van. It’s 660cc, doesn’t have rear seat belts, or a radio, it does have power windows though.
I enjoy driving both for different purposes, but I have to agree with you. On long distance driving (>200km), the BMW is safer. Cruise control, lane keeping, auto distance. It really makes long, multi hour drives less tiring.
Because of the growth imperative. With essential things like ICE cars, phones and personal computing, we long satisfied need, those core business products are simply essentially finished/perfected. It's market, and therefore regulatory, failure to have gigantic corporations in positions enabling rent seeking and market shaping, instead of pushing true innovation. If Apple can't come up with something innovative, they need to be forced to downscale instead of creating artificial demand for essentially the same phone 5 years in a row. If VW repeatedly missed the chance to get off their obsolete engine platform, they need to fail.
I think, Cory Doctorow's idea for regaining digital resilience, by "simply" opening up artificial software restrictions through regulation, is widely applicable and would also push for adequate downscaling and actual innovation: https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/01/39c3/
You have cameras, sensors, gps, maps, that need to be updated... and all that would easily be solved by a few policemen with radar guns and writing fines.
my father in law has a vw caddy (sdi). it has something like 120k in it even though it looks beaten up. i once told him I'm surprised. he told me that's 1.120.000km as the analog dial goes back to 0 after a million
I think chances are vastly better now with EVs, you probably could reuse the crowdfunded opensource washing machine. Combustion engines are simply way, way too complex. Although I presume the real showstopper is control electronics and regulatory approval for ICEs and EVs alike.
There are years-long threads dozens of pages long on priuschat.com with data files posted by wizards just to figure out the 12v charging pattern.
The vehicle itself will probably stop running before any of these wizards ever figure that out, or even understand the algorithm it uses to occasionally run the engine in EV mode.
And yet, I speculate the total runtime of any year of that vehicle will match what you see for the much simpler Citroen C15-- essentially, bounded only by however long the wizard wants to drive it.
Edit: preemptively-- the Prius driver can drive their Prius on roads appropriate for that type of vehicle for as long as they want. Citroen obviously can go more places-- my upshot is just that the glaring complexity of a Prius doesn't seem to have gotten in the way of its reliability as the author assumes it should have.
>They have no ECU to brick, no adblue sensors to fail and put the car into limp mode
Which means they are some of the most polluting and wasteful cars available. ECUs are good. They make cars safer, more reliable and more efficient. Car manufacturers had to be dragged kicking and screaming to add adblue, because the Diesel engines are pretty toxic otherwise.
The apologia for old cars is just insane, they are not what you think they are.
>If your C15 breaks down in a field, you can fix it with a wrench.
What really makes me mad is how bumpers were made to protect the car and now they are these expressions of design that you have to protect at all costs from scratches even.
> What really makes me mad is how bumpers were made to protect the car and now they are these expressions of design that you have to protect
Bumpers today are made to protect the car's occupants, not the car.
They are the start of the crumple zone, whose purpose is to absorb and release most of the energy transfer of the crash by deforming, rather than transferring it to the passenger compartment.
> The C15 represents a time when a vehicle was a tool.
I don't think that's true, the car as mere tool is romantic anachronism. Back then, cars were central identitarian elements to the post-war, western promise of salvation. Whole cities were torn down and rebuild to fit the car. The car had ideological significance. I think, identitarian attachment to the car is actually less today, but due to the historic importance and focus, cars have become unconditional necessities in many places.
I think the reason, you frequently see "old cars as tools" in southern Europe still, is the fact most regions there only started industrialization after 1970 and were/are still greatly underdeveloped/relatively poor, compared to eg. early industrialized nations like Germany, which are super car-centric. They suffered less car adaptation at the time and as a consequence e.g. SUVs would be rather impractical in some places with extremely narrow streets. Additionally, (remaining) farmers in e.g. Germany are almost exclusively rather rich entrepreneurs managing industrialized food production on flat, boring lands, than "poor peasants" caring for traditional farms in remote villages living off tourism somewhere pretty.
Probably less due to zeitgeist/mentality, but rather geography, historic economic abilities and availability.
Can you give an example of a European city that was "torn down and rebuilt to fit the car?"
In my experience, even cities that suffered a lot of war time damage (Hamburg, Dresden) were rebuilt with every street in exactly the same place with the same narrow width.
> If your Range Rover breaks down in a field because a sensor in the air suspension noticed a voltage variance...you are stranded until a tow truck takes it to a dealer.
No, you just reset the ECU and get on with your day.
With all due respect, you are confusing a software race condition with a hard fault in a safety critical system.
Resetting the ECU only works if the error is a transient glitch in the code logic. If the failure is a physical sensor reading out of range?
Furthermore, modern automotive architectures store permanent diagnostic trouble codes in non volatile memory specifically to prevent people from "just resetting it" to bypass emissions or safety checks. You cannot clear those with a battery pull. You would need a proprietary manufacturer tool to force a relearn or adaptation.
But more importantly, your argument accepts a terrifying premise. That a 2.5 ton kinetic object moving at highway speeds should have the reliability profile of a consumer router. If I have to treat my vehicle like a frozen windows 98 desktop to get home, the automotive engineering has failed me. Physics doesn't need a reboot.
This. I think the entire argument and comparison is a fallacy because you can't just compare vehicles on utilitarian factors when many (most?) people are buying primarily based on fashion/aesthetics. Through my American eyes that C15 is dog shit ugly and I don't even care to read through how it measures up on utility because it's style is already a dealbreaker.
Personally-I know I don't need a big truck, and don't have farm/ranch/heavy duty requirements, but SUVs are quite useful for normal city life in most of the US. Several times a month I am fully loaded for some reason or another. May as well be fashionable and handle well too since this is also the vehicle I commute in and valet at a fancy restaurant occasionally.
I noticed that people often treat cars as they treat clothes. It's their largest and most expensive costumes.
This means that fashion and looks start to play a major role, utility be damned. This also means that relatively minor details, like the exact shape of headlights, become a major stylistic and thus market niche differentiator.
I don't think it's a new problem with cars. But it maybe relatively new in the utility / light truck space.
> The Ford Ranger (2020). One of the most popular pickups in the US. A key selling point is that the cabin is so high you can run over toddlers without even noticing.
The craziest thing about this criticism is that it is phrased as hyperbole but the reality is that this is seen as a small truck in the US.
The Ford Ranger actually is the best selling pickup truck in Europe for 10 straight years, but doesn’t sell as much in the US. The larger F series trucks sell more than an order of magnitude more in the US.
The best part about the F-150 is that it isn't even toddlers at that point. The most common F-150 variant I see in my area's hood goes up to my shoulder and I'm 2 meters tall.
You often see the very important people driving these working their way through crowded parking lots and places that are primarily foot traffic with a "Wtach out for ME!" driving style.
It's so funny that when people design vehicles that actually have a need to be big - big buses, commercial vans, fire trucks - one of their common features is that visibility is treated as something important, and often these types of vehicles have either a nearly flat, uniform front side, or they try to minimize the engine compartment hump as much as possible and make the windshield huge. But when we talk about cars that are made for the consumer, all sanity goes out the window, we get these near-caricatures that would be hilarious if they weren't real. The craziness can only be somewhat tamed by government restrictions, depending on where you live, but the peak of this design results in huge, elevated flat boxes for engine compartments, mounted as high as possible. It doesn't matter that the driver has a blind spot in every direction, what matters is showing off how HUGE your 18L V32 engine must surely be under that hood, how powerful it must be to draw air through that chrome grille that's half a person's height, and most importantly, how much of an imposing heroic warrior one must be to own that tank.
> The Ford Ranger actually sells better in Europe than it does in the US. And the larger F series trucks sell more than an order of magnitude more.
Do you have any sources for this? I looked online and found a couple of charts, none of them support this claim. The Ford Ranger sales in Europe vs US are similar (who buys more varies by year) but the F series seems to be mostly bought in US
I'm probably one of the few people in this thread who are actually truck shopping right now
The ranger is a great option for most people but one of my capabilities for the truck is to bring my bike to motorcycle track days. Usually I'd only take a single motorcycle, however track days are more fun with friends. to fit two motorcycles in the back of the Ranger, you need to adjust the angle of the handlebars awkwardly to fit both on the bed.[0]
that leaves only the bigger 1500 class trucks as options for me, and why I'm going with an F150
> to fit two motorcycles in the back of the Ranger, you need to adjust the angle of the handlebars awkwardly to fit both on the bed.
can't you position one bike facing forward and one facing back, so the handlebars don't collide? Either way, going with an absurdly big and dangerous car to avoid _awkwardly positioning_ some cargo is pretty American thing to do
Don't know why you are down voted. People just assume that you have a place to store a trailer (and truck and motorcycle).
As to your choice of the Ford,as a rural late model (2018) F-150 owner, I'd encourage you to consider something else. A used Tundra V8 or one of the GMC/Chevy's. My mechanic is thumbs down on the Rams longer term.
I've had nothing but stupidity with this F-150 and all I do is personal plowing and a few loads of gravel or dirt each year. Granted, my steep dirt road can be very rough in mud season. But I've now spent about 8K in non-maintenance repairs.
I say this as a past owner of multiple mustangs and rangers - I'm done with Ford.
A lot of commenters saying you "need" a trailer (instead of an F150), but another option would be one bike in the bed and the second bike (if needed) on a hitch-mounted rack. A hitch rack takes less space to store when you're not using it than a full trailer. It would probably be more annoying to load and unload than just putting two bikes in the bed.
Anyway, if you want an F150, get it -- I don't really care.
This is dumb, I've lost count of how many times I've hauled multiple motorcycles somewhere and you know how I do it? A trailer. It's easier and safer to load and unload, which is why almost everyone else does that as well.
If you want an 'image' purchase just own up to it. Your post hoc justifications don't really hold water.
Similarly I have been thinking about a van so I can sleep in air conditioning between track day sessions and/or races. I also want to be able to bring materials to my workshop. Not sure what I will do, yet.
I have a Ford F-150 (14 gen) and the front is so huge I need to step on the front grill guard to reach anything inside the engine compartment. It is all around an unreasonably sized vehicle. My excuse is that (a) I do use it for home improvement stuff and for hauling stuff around and (b) I work from home so no commute. But for most people who do not work construction this is an insane daily driver.
> I do use it for home improvement stuff and for hauling stuff around
I don’t understand this argument, as they seem incredibly impractical for that. There is very little space for ‘stuff’, there is only the uncovered bed which is relatively small. The bed is also at an awkward height so very impractical to get stuff in or out. Since the bed is open, you always have to take all your ‘stuff’ out, you can’t leave tools in there or anything of value or it will get stolen. If you put a hard cover on. it leaves even less space. And since a large part of the vehicle has no roof you cannot have a roof rack.
You do not see these used by people in construction or other trades here in Europe. They use vans. An (extended) van has an ungodly amount of lockable storage space, easily accessible with side and back doors, with a floor at a reasonable height and if that isn’t enough you with a roof rack you can strap a lot to the roof as well.
I really don’t see how something like an F-150 is more practical for ‘hauling stuff’ than something like a Mercedes Sprinter.
I did look up some numbers (used the most capable configuration I could find for each of the vehicles):
Max bed length for an F-150: 247cm
Max cargo space length for a Sprinter: 481cm
I think the F-150 is the most popular. I know many people don’t care about other’s subjective experiences, but it’s always such a mindfuck to my EU mind when I see trucks of this size.
Like my brain expects the car to finish, but there’s more car. Then it happens again and again in a quick succession. It confuses me, I shake it off. I look at the car again. The bed is empty, there’s one person in it.
Then I think „what’s the point”? And then I remember we grew up in different environments and have different expectations about how things should look like. And I still don’t fully get it.
Almost any large car will fit almost anywhere in the US, so you might as well get the car that serves even your most marginal use cases. Fuel costs are much lower than Europe, and Americans are relatively richer anyway.
From my experience, these trucks make much more sense on a road in the US. European roads are fairly small so these trucks look _even bigger_, whereas in the US everything is massive so the cars fit. Still, having to look _up_ to see the windshield is crazy and I hope it won't be normalized in the EU
My first car I got in Germany was a C15. I used it to transport server racks, but also had a mattress in the back and had my first sex on it. On muddy festivals where others cars got stuck, I was able to get out easily. Repairs were dirt cheap. It also had a tow bar, and was able to pull a 1.5 metric ton trailer to get equipment to a computer party.
And I still was able to do 160 km/h (100 MPH) with it on the Autobahn. With or without server racks, with or without sex.
Best car I ever had.
It is really insane that these days cars on average weigh 25-40 times of their load. Human stupidity never ceases to amaze me.
At first I wanted to write a comment about how cars and sex are apparently very well linked. Upon thinking it over once more, it appears that the real link to sex is privacy, which is of course obvious. Thinking over it once more, we're brought back to the real selling point of cars: total privacy. Public transport is on paper really good, but it is totally devoid of privacy - which means that it is bad in reality. In other more provocative words, public transportation is bad because you can't have sex on the bus
Citroën were the first to make diesel filters standard. And my C15 had the HDi engine with diesel filters. And unlike others, they did not cheat and were not part of the Diesel scandal.
Also, I survived.
And when it comes to security features, more important than not having side airbags would have been not to combine smoking weed and fellatio while doing 160.
I am not saying that any of this would be a good idea if keeping your life is a priority.
But even with maniacs like myself on the road, Germany has deaths from fatal car crashes of 3-4 per 100,000, while the US has 12-13.
But again, I am not a lawyer, not a doctor, and this is not health advise, just a true story of what I did 25 years ago that may or may not entertain readers.
Also, I would like to kindly remind you of the concept of "time". This was 25 year ago. The alternatives would have been worse. These days a C15 would be electric.
Obviously the OP is tounge-in-cheek, so keep it lightly.
But it does have merit: If you wish to measure your environmental footprint, you must look at the total lifetime of car, most importantly the manufacturing part. There is a difference between 900 KG of parts for a C15 vs 1,900 - 2400 KG for a Ford Ranger. These days most PM come from braking. Stopping 2000 KG will obviously cause more emissions from the brakes than stopping 1000 KG.
All in all, the point really is: The ratio between weight/size of the car itself and what is inside (people and/or server racks) has gotten completely out of hand. No, you do not need a 2,000 KG tank to move your 50-100 KG of flesh around. It's insanity, no matter if your care about the planet or not.
And it weighs less than half of the other two (less than a ton), so less power is needed.
I agree though, the C15 is slower than the other two, but less than you’d perhaps think.
I own a Citroën 2CV. It has some of the same qualities: super robust, incredibly off-roady, simple mechanically, but I take my “regular car” (2017) for road trips > 100km…
I’ve done numerous long road trips in the 2CV though, before I got the other car. Some longer than 1000km.
I agree with the TFA, that many overestimate their needs, but older cars are also less luxurious - obviously!
The post is a hot take, slightly tongue-in-cheek, isn’t it? :)
It's also unsafe. He's comparing it to a modern Ranger, not the Ranger of the same year as the C15 (which was much smaller and got better fuel economy), and he completely ignores the fact that the Citroen wasn't sold in North America.
He seems to imply there would be no appetite for one here but I disagree. In western Canada I see imported Kei trucks everywhere and these fill a similar niche!
That’s fair if you only account for usage emission. The compared tanks weight 2/3x as much (more ressources to extract, manufacture, transport…) and are made of intricate polymers, composites, wires & electronics… event the metal alloys are very technical (saving them to weight even more) and can’t be recycled into newer car. Old cars are mainly… steel.
Right now french people are obsessed with ecology and egalitarianism. Those who don't are not well seen in society, or left the country already.
So the best thing I'd see them excelling at in this century, if they can drive their ideology in the right direction, would be producing low-tech solutions solving 90% of problems with 20% of the costs, with open-source like tools / materials / methods everyone can replicate easily. A bit like this article about this old car.
> Right now french people are obsessed with ecology and egalitarianism.
Do you have anything to read up on that? This got me a little excited, but I also doubt it due to the rise of right wing populism everywhere else. Man, if France actually got the rare attitude to get shit done in these times, I may move there and help.
I'm a big fan of the current range of French Renault electric cars.
The 5, 4, Megan and Scenic are just excellent.
I think the Scenic is probably the one I'd buy right now based on the range, 380 miles but the 5 and the 4 have so much character they're probably the first really iconic electric car designs IMHO.
The guillotine remark resonates in today reality because people feel this scam. Tone-policing the symptom while ignoring the cause is naive.
The C15 thread shows exactly why: It beats modern trucks in pure utility. Today we are paying more for less value.
It is exactly the wealth extraction Ray Dalio describes in Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order (Stage 5 of the debt cycle), resulting in internal conflict.
You know modern France has the exact same problem of billionaire lobbying and media consolidation that the US has right?
Arnault (LVMH) [0], Trappier (Dassault) [1], Niel (Illiad) [2], Lagardère (Lagardère SA) [3], Bolloré (Bolloré Group) [4] and a couple others have an inordinate amount of control over French politics. It's also why whenever a country like China, the US, India, or others wants to hold the EU by the balls, they end up tariffing Congac, because Arnault's LVMH has a near monopoly on Congac production in France, so he almost always pressures Macron into acquiesing because otherwise he would threaten to back the RN.
Both France and the US are similarly ranked flawed democracies [5] with similar dysfunctions.
Also, immediately following the revolution, the guillotiners ended up doing it for the rich [6], as the French Revolution ended up leading to the re-establishment of authoritarian rule with le Directoire, Napoleon, Napoleon III, and others. The only thing you learn from the French Revolution is the same thing you learn from Tahrir Square - the house always wins, which in political science is modeled via Selectorate Theory [7] and Veto Players [8].
Sadly, it's the same reason why despite mass protest after mass protest, the Iranian regime hasn't fallen - the primary political and economic veto players in Iran (Army, IRGC, Basij, Police, Clergy, Business leadership, SoE leadership, Bonyad leadership) haven't defected because they have more to lose than gain if a revolution succeeded. The moment a handful of these interests think they can expand their presence under a new regime is when you would see Khamenei fall, but the leadership would end up being the same ba***rds anyhow, just like how the Islamic Republic ended up co-opting and rehabilitating army officers and business leadership from the Shah's regime during the Iran-Iraq War and after the cultural revolution.
> "The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which" —GO
> "Now, however, the concept of human brotherhood began to be assailed by people who were not yet in positions of command, but merely hoped to be so before long. In the past the Middle had made revolutions under the banner of equality, and then had established a fresh tyranny as soon as the old one was overthrown. The new Middle groups in effect proclaimed their tyranny beforehand." —EG
The guillotine wasn't for the super rich, but for the privileged by birth. The equivalent would be to guillotine the nepo babies (and the Ivy League administrators who rubber stamp their admission).
Or fix inheritance. And by fix I mean tax as hell.
I know it's a joke, but if you clip a curb or even a slightly chunky branch at 15mph in one of these EVERYONE DIES (...only partially joking)
In a crash it'll fold up like the tin can it is, even against a car of a similar vintage and size (no comment on the cows). Up against even a modern supermini and you're literal mince meat, let alone a modern SUV. At least you won't suffer long.
So if you are off roading or on a snowy road, hopefully you won't slip into a tree or roll over. Modern cars - even "small" ones -are heavier partly because they are substantially safer. A crash that would have had to have you cut out of the wreckage by the fire brigade (potentially losing a limb or two in the process) is now the sort of thing you can walk away from. Yes even in "small" modern cars (you do not need a SUV for safety).
It's night and day really - just go look at the archive on EuroNCAP.. In the crash tests that left 90s and early 2000s cars as unrecognisable mounds of broken and twisted metal (e.g. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9a8PTeFDaYU which was a car that was probably 10 years more advanced than the c15 in terms of safety...) now barely even break the windscreen of modern super-mini cars (e.g. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NaWVepTJTGw&t=1s&pp=2AEBkAIB). Amazing.
I used to drive through France in the C15 days and you'd see a lot of crashes compared to England, a lot because of the road layouts. Straight in France so people went fast through villages and the like. In England everything's twisty.
The Citroen Saxo was notably terrible. It was remarked upon even at the time, especially due to the target market of its sportier versions: foolish young men. Here's another hatchback from 2000, faring noticeably better: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBXNgKwWFs - not to say for a moment that you wouldn't still want a 2025 car.
But it's not like the saxo was unusually bad - here is another typical car from the same era https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=M0P9MistIDg - the interior angles (especially the footwell camera) are particularly chilling and terrifying!
I had a Renault Kangoo and was similarly militant about its supremacy. It was a cheap, reliable thing and people carrier. It could fit five people, or two people, two bicycles and plenty of camping gear. It was cheap and ugly enough to shrug about cosmetic damage, so I never worried about kicking the doors shut or sitting on the roof. It was also tiny and easy to drive and park. It was mechanically simple and reliable.
It broke down recently at 18 years of age and I can't justify maintaining a car in Berlin, but I loved that car to bits.
Most people who live in rural Britain today are still getting around in hatchbacks or estates (station wagons, to use the American term). The enormous SUVs are almost entirely driven by people who've used their money to buy into the countryside aesthetic.
Readit News
I still see these running in rural Spain and France, usually held together with wire and hope, clocking like what 400k+ km? The XUD diesel engines are practically unkillable. They have no ECU to brick, no adblue sensors to fail and put the car into limp mode and thankfully none of those DRM locked headlights.
The argument for the countryside need of a modern SUV usually cites reliability and safety, and in 2026, modern complexity is the enemy of reliability. If your C15 breaks down in a field, you can fix it with a wrench. If your Range Rover breaks down in a field because a sensor in the air suspension noticed a voltage variance...you are stranded until a tow truck takes it to a dealer.
I wonder how differently cars would be built, if instead of maximizing for value extraction and crap nobody needs, they instead were optimized for utility and maintenance (and sure, fuel economy, aerodynamics and some sane environmental stuff). Like take the C15 and add 2-4 decades of manufacturing and safety improvements, while keeping it simple and utilitarian.
1. You keep the modern metallurgy and the crumple zones. You keep ABS and basic traction control because they are solved problems that save lives without needing cloud connectivity.
2. Instead of a 2000 USD proprietary touchscreen that will be obsolete in 3 years, the dashboard could be just a double DIN slot and a heavy-duty, universal tablet mount with a 100W USB-C PD port. The car provides the power and the speakers and my phone provides the maps and music. When the tech improves, you upgrade your phone, not your dashboard.
3. Nobs and buttons instead of touchscreens like VW has done recently, if my memory serves me right.
The tragedy is that regulations in the EU and North America make this incredibly difficult to sell. The sane environmental stuff you mentioned has morphed into a requirement for deeply integrated electronic oversight. But I genuinely believe there is a massive, silent majority of drivers waiting for a car that promises nothing other than to start every morning and never ask for a software update.
Auto manufacturers already have stripped-down base models of their entry-level vehicles. Many have commercial versions of their vehicles, especially trucks and vans, that are stripped down.
The stripped down base models don't sell well.
Remember how the internet was clamoring for an iPhone Mini? Whenever there were complaints about modern cell phones, you could find what looked like unanimous agreement that a smaller iPhone would be the golden ticket. Then Apple made an iPhone Mini, and it did not sell well.
The same happens with vehicles. Whenever you find threads complaining about modern vehicles it seems unanimous that modern vehicles have too many things consumers don't want and we'd be better off with simple base models. Yet simple base models do exist already and they don't sell well. Real consumers look at their $20,000 Nissan Versa and realize that spending an extra $1-2K on amenities isn't going to change their monthly payment much.
There is a lot of precedent for this. The Tata Nano was an Indian micro car that was small, low-power, and had bare minimum amenities. It was under $5K USD in inflation-adjusted dollars.
It was discontinued due to low demand because sales declined steadily year over year. Nobody wanted it.
The margin in cars is in the luxury. And for most personal buyers they’ll get as much luxury as they can afford because they are contemplating their monthly cost over total price and leather seats cost $80 more per month on a $600 monthly, they’ll splurge.
Safety improvement means larger crumple zones, reinforcement, etc... Which mean a bigger and heavier vehicle if you want to keep the same capacity. That in turn means a more powerful engine, brakes, wheels and tyres, etc... further increasing the size and weight of the vehicle. This is an exponential factor.
Fuel economy and environmental stuff (which are linked) come with tighter engine control for better combustion and cleaner exhaust. It means tighter tolerances so simple tools may be less appropriate, and electronics.
And there are comfort elements that are hard to pass nowadays: A/C, power steering, door lock and windows. Mandatory safety equipment like airbags and ABS. Even simple cars like what Dacia makes are still bigger, heavier and more complex than older cars like the C15, they don't really have a choice.
When companies make less money, there's less jobs. When there's less jobs people have less money to spend on things like Rent.
You can quickly see what a mortal sin this would be against our Lord and Savior, Capitalism.
It's the frequency of breakdowns times how fucked you are when it does break down.
So the actual math also depends on your means and where you live.
I don't want these, I don't want to pay for them. They raise the cost and they're unavoidable. This is a NEGATIVE, not a positive.
Could be a coincidence, but I seem to hear the opposite from almost every single car mechanic I have ever talked to
I don't know enough to say whether realizability requires lower DIYability.
This is another topic where people look back on the past with rose colored glasses. At the risk of downvotes, this happens a lot on HN like in threads where people speak about their pre-SSD era computers as being faster and snappier than modern machines. I recently found my old laptop in storage and booted it up. I remember loving how fast it was at the time and being glad I spent extra for the fastest model at the time, but oh boy was it slow relative to anything I use today.
I could. My wife couldn't.
Also, let's not forget the creature comforts of modern cars... rear seats, airbags, sound insulation, power steering, automatic transmissions, 4wd.
Living in the country, tool-vehicles are very useful. This is typically a beat up old 2wd pickup truck (lower is easier to load) with an 8-ft bed (so you can load full sheets of plywood) and a single cab (so you can get an 8-ft bed). My buddy down the street has one and I borrow it all the time. But you'd never take the family anywhere with this thing. It basically spends its entire life going back and forth to Lowes.
Because she doesn't drive a C15. Believe me, rural french women _will_ fix a C15. There's nothing to break down anyways, the engine is happy to run on distilled corn and melted rubber for oil, the suspension is what suspension, three tires ought to be enough for everyone.
> rear seats,
There's rear benches for you whole family and space for your kids to play around in the back while you're driving, what more do you want ?
>airbags
Useless if you don't crash.
>sound insulation
What do you need to hear except the beautiful sound of the X-Type engine (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PSA-Renault_X-Type_engine) ?
>power steering
Grab a phase 3, it has power steering. Or get stronger arms. Or stop trying to steer while you're not moving forward.
> automatic transmissions
You don't need automatic transmissions, you need to learn how to drive stick. The C15 has the added benefit that you don't really have a proper range to change gears, it'll just go in. Actually you don't even need to clutch, just jam the thing.
>4wd
Absolutely useless for 100% of the usages the average american makes of it. If it can drive through mud while carrying cows, it will handle anything you have to throw at it. 4WD sure is a nice thing to make you pay for more gas though.
>Living in the country, it's very useful to own a tool-vehicle. This is typically a beat up old 2wd pickup truck (lower is easier to load) with an 8-ft bed (so you can load full sheets of plywood) and a single cab (so you can get an 8-ft bed). My buddy down the street has one and I borrow it all the time. But you'd never take the family anywhere with this thing. It basically spends its entire life going back and forth to Lowes.
Alright, all kidding aside though: the US is literally the only country in the world that considers pickup trucks as a good utility vehicle: they are the most dogshit type of vehicle you could own for anything, and that includes your sheets of plywood. Pickup trucks are not used by anyone serious anywhere else in the world. Need to carry a bunch of crap ? Buy a busted Renault Master (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renault_Master) and it has the added benefit of you being able to buy your plywood in crazy situations like the tiniest bits of rain.
The US's obsession for pickup trucks is the sign of a deeply unserious society.
The Toyota Hilux makes for a good vehicle to mount weapons in the back, but please see a lawyer about the legality of mounting an M60 at the back of your car if you're not living in AfghanistanMany women can, though. So I don't see how that's an argument
There is still a "C15" by the way. It's even less ugly. It's called the Berlingo [1]. Cheapest version is 24000euro + tax, or 35000 + tax for the hybrid version. Let's say in practice it'll run you 30000 euro.
In other words, after tax and counting inflation, let's summarize that since 1984, European cars have about doubled in price. Wages in the EU have gone up about 2x, after inflation.
You have to work 30000/2600 (avg wage per month, euros, in France) = just shy of an entire year of work if you invested 100% of your wage into the car. So let's say 2 years of work.
(due to the EU strongly opposing equal wages across the EU, there is a very large difference between average wage in France and, say, Greece. VERY large, more than 100%)
In 1977, you would have 4900FF average wage in France (in French Francs), and the C15 cost 62000FF. So, just about 12 months at 100% average wage, or let's say 2 years or work, saving up.
So, it even costs about the same.
And, sadly, one is forced to admit that when it comes to European cars, this is a pretty damn good result for that company. Most EU brands have done far worse.
[1] https://www.citroen.fr/vehicules/utility/Berlingo-Van.html
At least in Germany, due to it's age it would classify as a historic vehicle (number plate with an H) and be exempt from emission standards.
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Many of the modern car features are just useless marketing fluff, but there is some really good progress too.
I enjoy driving both for different purposes, but I have to agree with you. On long distance driving (>200km), the BMW is safer. Cruise control, lane keeping, auto distance. It really makes long, multi hour drives less tiring.
I wouldn’t drive my Acty to the next town.
The same cancer that turned technology from a tool to an ad delivery machine is affecting vehicles.
I think, Cory Doctorow's idea for regaining digital resilience, by "simply" opening up artificial software restrictions through regulation, is widely applicable and would also push for adequate downscaling and actual innovation: https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/01/39c3/
eg: https://www.forbes.com/sites/edgarsten/2024/07/01/mandated-a...
You have cameras, sensors, gps, maps, that need to be updated... and all that would easily be solved by a few policemen with radar guns and writing fines.
Do they go there?
I mostly see those in parking lots occupying two spaces (a white one 4, once) or cruising slowly in narrow high streets.
You'd have to fit a mechanical injection pump, which has a different sized pulley, for a start. And injectors and lines adapted to fit.
Pretty much infeasible, I suppose.
The open source washing machine and printer still aren't here either... :(
There are years-long threads dozens of pages long on priuschat.com with data files posted by wizards just to figure out the 12v charging pattern.
The vehicle itself will probably stop running before any of these wizards ever figure that out, or even understand the algorithm it uses to occasionally run the engine in EV mode.
And yet, I speculate the total runtime of any year of that vehicle will match what you see for the much simpler Citroen C15-- essentially, bounded only by however long the wizard wants to drive it.
Edit: preemptively-- the Prius driver can drive their Prius on roads appropriate for that type of vehicle for as long as they want. Citroen obviously can go more places-- my upshot is just that the glaring complexity of a Prius doesn't seem to have gotten in the way of its reliability as the author assumes it should have.
Which means they are some of the most polluting and wasteful cars available. ECUs are good. They make cars safer, more reliable and more efficient. Car manufacturers had to be dragged kicking and screaming to add adblue, because the Diesel engines are pretty toxic otherwise.
The apologia for old cars is just insane, they are not what you think they are.
>If your C15 breaks down in a field, you can fix it with a wrench.
This is just delusional.
Bumpers today are made to protect the car's occupants, not the car.
They are the start of the crumple zone, whose purpose is to absorb and release most of the energy transfer of the crash by deforming, rather than transferring it to the passenger compartment.
I don't think that's true, the car as mere tool is romantic anachronism. Back then, cars were central identitarian elements to the post-war, western promise of salvation. Whole cities were torn down and rebuild to fit the car. The car had ideological significance. I think, identitarian attachment to the car is actually less today, but due to the historic importance and focus, cars have become unconditional necessities in many places.
I think the reason, you frequently see "old cars as tools" in southern Europe still, is the fact most regions there only started industrialization after 1970 and were/are still greatly underdeveloped/relatively poor, compared to eg. early industrialized nations like Germany, which are super car-centric. They suffered less car adaptation at the time and as a consequence e.g. SUVs would be rather impractical in some places with extremely narrow streets. Additionally, (remaining) farmers in e.g. Germany are almost exclusively rather rich entrepreneurs managing industrialized food production on flat, boring lands, than "poor peasants" caring for traditional farms in remote villages living off tourism somewhere pretty.
Probably less due to zeitgeist/mentality, but rather geography, historic economic abilities and availability.
In my experience, even cities that suffered a lot of war time damage (Hamburg, Dresden) were rebuilt with every street in exactly the same place with the same narrow width.
No, you just reset the ECU and get on with your day.
Resetting the ECU only works if the error is a transient glitch in the code logic. If the failure is a physical sensor reading out of range?
Furthermore, modern automotive architectures store permanent diagnostic trouble codes in non volatile memory specifically to prevent people from "just resetting it" to bypass emissions or safety checks. You cannot clear those with a battery pull. You would need a proprietary manufacturer tool to force a relearn or adaptation.
But more importantly, your argument accepts a terrifying premise. That a 2.5 ton kinetic object moving at highway speeds should have the reliability profile of a consumer router. If I have to treat my vehicle like a frozen windows 98 desktop to get home, the automotive engineering has failed me. Physics doesn't need a reboot.
Personally-I know I don't need a big truck, and don't have farm/ranch/heavy duty requirements, but SUVs are quite useful for normal city life in most of the US. Several times a month I am fully loaded for some reason or another. May as well be fashionable and handle well too since this is also the vehicle I commute in and valet at a fancy restaurant occasionally.
This means that fashion and looks start to play a major role, utility be damned. This also means that relatively minor details, like the exact shape of headlights, become a major stylistic and thus market niche differentiator.
I don't think it's a new problem with cars. But it maybe relatively new in the utility / light truck space.
The craziest thing about this criticism is that it is phrased as hyperbole but the reality is that this is seen as a small truck in the US.
The Ford Ranger actually is the best selling pickup truck in Europe for 10 straight years, but doesn’t sell as much in the US. The larger F series trucks sell more than an order of magnitude more in the US.
You often see the very important people driving these working their way through crowded parking lots and places that are primarily foot traffic with a "Wtach out for ME!" driving style.
Do you have any sources for this? I looked online and found a couple of charts, none of them support this claim. The Ford Ranger sales in Europe vs US are similar (who buys more varies by year) but the F series seems to be mostly bought in US
The ranger is a great option for most people but one of my capabilities for the truck is to bring my bike to motorcycle track days. Usually I'd only take a single motorcycle, however track days are more fun with friends. to fit two motorcycles in the back of the Ranger, you need to adjust the angle of the handlebars awkwardly to fit both on the bed.[0]
that leaves only the bigger 1500 class trucks as options for me, and why I'm going with an F150
[0]:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmegARwXN7Q
can't you position one bike facing forward and one facing back, so the handlebars don't collide? Either way, going with an absurdly big and dangerous car to avoid _awkwardly positioning_ some cargo is pretty American thing to do
You’d pay an extra $7000 because… you don’t like to pack?
As to your choice of the Ford,as a rural late model (2018) F-150 owner, I'd encourage you to consider something else. A used Tundra V8 or one of the GMC/Chevy's. My mechanic is thumbs down on the Rams longer term.
I've had nothing but stupidity with this F-150 and all I do is personal plowing and a few loads of gravel or dirt each year. Granted, my steep dirt road can be very rough in mud season. But I've now spent about 8K in non-maintenance repairs.
I say this as a past owner of multiple mustangs and rangers - I'm done with Ford.
Anyway, if you want an F150, get it -- I don't really care.
If you want an 'image' purchase just own up to it. Your post hoc justifications don't really hold water.
I don’t understand this argument, as they seem incredibly impractical for that. There is very little space for ‘stuff’, there is only the uncovered bed which is relatively small. The bed is also at an awkward height so very impractical to get stuff in or out. Since the bed is open, you always have to take all your ‘stuff’ out, you can’t leave tools in there or anything of value or it will get stolen. If you put a hard cover on. it leaves even less space. And since a large part of the vehicle has no roof you cannot have a roof rack.
You do not see these used by people in construction or other trades here in Europe. They use vans. An (extended) van has an ungodly amount of lockable storage space, easily accessible with side and back doors, with a floor at a reasonable height and if that isn’t enough you with a roof rack you can strap a lot to the roof as well.
I really don’t see how something like an F-150 is more practical for ‘hauling stuff’ than something like a Mercedes Sprinter.
I did look up some numbers (used the most capable configuration I could find for each of the vehicles):
Max bed length for an F-150: 247cm Max cargo space length for a Sprinter: 481cm
Bed/cargo width: F-150: 126cm, Sprinter 178cm Bed/cargo height: F-150: 54cm, Sprinter: 200cm
Max. payload capacity: F-150 : 1106kg, Sprinter 1477kg for the extra-long version, 2447kg for the long version.
My wife, that is. She’s 5’10”.
Like my brain expects the car to finish, but there’s more car. Then it happens again and again in a quick succession. It confuses me, I shake it off. I look at the car again. The bed is empty, there’s one person in it.
Then I think „what’s the point”? And then I remember we grew up in different environments and have different expectations about how things should look like. And I still don’t fully get it.
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My first car I got in Germany was a C15. I used it to transport server racks, but also had a mattress in the back and had my first sex on it. On muddy festivals where others cars got stuck, I was able to get out easily. Repairs were dirt cheap. It also had a tow bar, and was able to pull a 1.5 metric ton trailer to get equipment to a computer party.
And I still was able to do 160 km/h (100 MPH) with it on the Autobahn. With or without server racks, with or without sex.
Best car I ever had.
It is really insane that these days cars on average weigh 25-40 times of their load. Human stupidity never ceases to amaze me.
(But my grandma had a flat that she did not live in during the summer months... hmm... sweet memories... excuse me, what were we talking about again?)
I think, you were just about to tell us about your first time with your grandma.
https://web.archive.org/web/20180408023557/https://members.i...
You were doing 160 in a death trap with minimal safety features, which was literally making the air unbreathable.
Also, I survived.
And when it comes to security features, more important than not having side airbags would have been not to combine smoking weed and fellatio while doing 160.
I am not saying that any of this would be a good idea if keeping your life is a priority.
But even with maniacs like myself on the road, Germany has deaths from fatal car crashes of 3-4 per 100,000, while the US has 12-13.
But again, I am not a lawyer, not a doctor, and this is not health advise, just a true story of what I did 25 years ago that may or may not entertain readers.
Also this car has only has 60hp.
Citroën were the first to make DPF standard.
Also, I would like to kindly remind you of the concept of "time". This was 25 year ago. The alternatives would have been worse. These days a C15 would be electric.
Obviously the OP is tounge-in-cheek, so keep it lightly.
But it does have merit: If you wish to measure your environmental footprint, you must look at the total lifetime of car, most importantly the manufacturing part. There is a difference between 900 KG of parts for a C15 vs 1,900 - 2400 KG for a Ford Ranger. These days most PM come from braking. Stopping 2000 KG will obviously cause more emissions from the brakes than stopping 1000 KG.
All in all, the point really is: The ratio between weight/size of the car itself and what is inside (people and/or server racks) has gotten completely out of hand. No, you do not need a 2,000 KG tank to move your 50-100 KG of flesh around. It's insanity, no matter if your care about the planet or not.
And it weighs less than half of the other two (less than a ton), so less power is needed.
I agree though, the C15 is slower than the other two, but less than you’d perhaps think.
I own a Citroën 2CV. It has some of the same qualities: super robust, incredibly off-roady, simple mechanically, but I take my “regular car” (2017) for road trips > 100km…
I’ve done numerous long road trips in the 2CV though, before I got the other car. Some longer than 1000km.
I agree with the TFA, that many overestimate their needs, but older cars are also less luxurious - obviously!
The post is a hot take, slightly tongue-in-cheek, isn’t it? :)
He seems to imply there would be no appetite for one here but I disagree. In western Canada I see imported Kei trucks everywhere and these fill a similar niche!
Ranger crashes into C15: Ranger wins, C15 passengers dead. Ranger crashes into human: Ranger wins, human dead.
C15 crashes into C15: Tossup. C15 crashes into human: C15 wins, but human is less dead.
The whole concept of car upsizing all the time is about that: If you crash into another moving object, you want to be the winner.
Understood. Buy a tank.
1) Guillotine for the super rich
2) Nuclear to power >70%
3) C15 for people, cows, craftsmen, mini house
4) TGV
5) french fries for the fastest carbohydrate delivery, handily beating rice
I wish they bring back the first 3 and do some shorts, market them to the world. Fries are doing fine.
So the best thing I'd see them excelling at in this century, if they can drive their ideology in the right direction, would be producing low-tech solutions solving 90% of problems with 20% of the costs, with open-source like tools / materials / methods everyone can replicate easily. A bit like this article about this old car.
While we're barreling toward climate catastrophe? That's not the criticism you think it is.
Do you have anything to read up on that? This got me a little excited, but I also doubt it due to the rise of right wing populism everywhere else. Man, if France actually got the rare attitude to get shit done in these times, I may move there and help.
The 5, 4, Megan and Scenic are just excellent.
I think the Scenic is probably the one I'd buy right now based on the range, 380 miles but the 5 and the 4 have so much character they're probably the first really iconic electric car designs IMHO.
https://www.rtbf.be/article/cuisine-la-frite-vient-elle-de-f...
https://www.news.uliege.be/cms/c_10630394/fr/les-grands-myth...
Can we not glorify mass executions on HN please? Bluesky is available if that's your thing.
The C15 thread shows exactly why: It beats modern trucks in pure utility. Today we are paying more for less value.
It is exactly the wealth extraction Ray Dalio describes in Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order (Stage 5 of the debt cycle), resulting in internal conflict.
I believe both nation would be offended about the confusion of origins.
Americans simply thought they are in France in WWII when they ate it.
; )
https://www.rtbf.be/article/cuisine-la-frite-vient-elle-de-f...
https://www.news.uliege.be/cms/c_10630394/fr/les-grands-myth...
You know modern France has the exact same problem of billionaire lobbying and media consolidation that the US has right?
Arnault (LVMH) [0], Trappier (Dassault) [1], Niel (Illiad) [2], Lagardère (Lagardère SA) [3], Bolloré (Bolloré Group) [4] and a couple others have an inordinate amount of control over French politics. It's also why whenever a country like China, the US, India, or others wants to hold the EU by the balls, they end up tariffing Congac, because Arnault's LVMH has a near monopoly on Congac production in France, so he almost always pressures Macron into acquiesing because otherwise he would threaten to back the RN.
Both France and the US are similarly ranked flawed democracies [5] with similar dysfunctions.
Also, immediately following the revolution, the guillotiners ended up doing it for the rich [6], as the French Revolution ended up leading to the re-establishment of authoritarian rule with le Directoire, Napoleon, Napoleon III, and others. The only thing you learn from the French Revolution is the same thing you learn from Tahrir Square - the house always wins, which in political science is modeled via Selectorate Theory [7] and Veto Players [8].
Sadly, it's the same reason why despite mass protest after mass protest, the Iranian regime hasn't fallen - the primary political and economic veto players in Iran (Army, IRGC, Basij, Police, Clergy, Business leadership, SoE leadership, Bonyad leadership) haven't defected because they have more to lose than gain if a revolution succeeded. The moment a handful of these interests think they can expand their presence under a new regime is when you would see Khamenei fall, but the leadership would end up being the same ba***rds anyhow, just like how the Islamic Republic ended up co-opting and rehabilitating army officers and business leadership from the Shah's regime during the Iran-Iraq War and after the cultural revolution.
[0] - https://www.lemonde.fr/en/politics/article/2023/08/07/how-be...
[1] - https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/frances-d...
[2] - https://www.lemonde.fr/en/les-decodeurs/article/2022/07/10/u...
[3] - https://www.reuters.com/article/world/macron-and-the-moguls-...
[4] - https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/culture-et-idees/dossier/la...
[5] - https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/democracy-index-eiu
[6] - https://www.jstor.org/stable/650023
[7] - https://www.jstor.org/stable/4092374
[8] - https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt7rvv7
> "Now, however, the concept of human brotherhood began to be assailed by people who were not yet in positions of command, but merely hoped to be so before long. In the past the Middle had made revolutions under the banner of equality, and then had established a fresh tyranny as soon as the old one was overthrown. The new Middle groups in effect proclaimed their tyranny beforehand." —EG
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Or fix inheritance. And by fix I mean tax as hell.
> Or fix inheritance. And by fix I mean tax as hell
If France can't fix it [1] after politically powerful billionaires stymied it [2], neither can the US
[0] - https://theconversation.com/the-french-revolution-executed-r...
[1] - https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2025/10/31/french-l...
[2] - https://www.reuters.com/world/frances-richest-man-lvmhs-arna...
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In a crash it'll fold up like the tin can it is, even against a car of a similar vintage and size (no comment on the cows). Up against even a modern supermini and you're literal mince meat, let alone a modern SUV. At least you won't suffer long.
So if you are off roading or on a snowy road, hopefully you won't slip into a tree or roll over. Modern cars - even "small" ones -are heavier partly because they are substantially safer. A crash that would have had to have you cut out of the wreckage by the fire brigade (potentially losing a limb or two in the process) is now the sort of thing you can walk away from. Yes even in "small" modern cars (you do not need a SUV for safety).
It's night and day really - just go look at the archive on EuroNCAP.. In the crash tests that left 90s and early 2000s cars as unrecognisable mounds of broken and twisted metal (e.g. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9a8PTeFDaYU which was a car that was probably 10 years more advanced than the c15 in terms of safety...) now barely even break the windscreen of modern super-mini cars (e.g. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NaWVepTJTGw&t=1s&pp=2AEBkAIB). Amazing.
But it's not like the saxo was unusually bad - here is another typical car from the same era https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=M0P9MistIDg - the interior angles (especially the footwell camera) are particularly chilling and terrifying!
It broke down recently at 18 years of age and I can't justify maintaining a car in Berlin, but I loved that car to bits.
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