PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum - View Single Post - spotted interesting cars during european trip

pj67coll · #13 11-10-2009, 11:28 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pavka007

I see that you are originally from RSA you should know better that the best selling car in Africa was Peugeot 404/504.

My family were addicted to them. We had many when I was a youth. They were fairly comfortable, unreliable pieces of crap. You think Mercedes have cooling issues? You've never had the dubious fortune of driving around africa in a car that is incapable of setting out from one town and arriving in another without overheating inbetween. We used to take several two liter coke bottels with us in our 404 wagon when we went on vacation and pull off to the side of the road every few hours. Wait for the temperature to decline enough that we could open the radiator without getting scalded and then empty the bottles into it. Got so bad that in the end one of my uncles took pity on us and lent us his 404 sedan one xmas. Wound up overheating a couple of hours from home. We got back with all four of us crammed into another uncles Mazda 323. Had a cousin with a 504 wagon. They were driving up from Cape Town to Durban on xmas. They set off in the 504 but arrived in a Mercedes Benz 190E. The Peugeot had overheated crossing the Karoo (desert) so they had to go back home and borrow the father in laws Mercedes. This was just in our family and was quite apart from the myriad other Peugeot's we saw along the roadsides in similar states of distress. And that's quite apart from watching cars literally fall apart from rust before our very eyes. I recall a large chunk of a 505's rocker panel simply falling off one day when the owner closed the door. And this car didn't even look that bad. Renaluts were even worse. Citroen's were few and far between, amazingly even less robust than Peugeots.

Sorry just never understood the attraction. There are vastly better vechcles out there. They tend to come from a country to the east of France and I don't have the time to muck about with french crud again.

- Peter.