Re: GM follows Mitsubishi's example

The company is aptly named.

Chris

What! you mock the mighty Citroen!!! Have you forgotten about the Citroen 2CV and the super high performance 4CV? Either of those cars would blow the wheels off of any Mattel Big Wheel you can think of LOL (provided the Big Wheel was being ridden by a quadriplegic two year old) :-)

Au contraire mon ami... The 2CV was the perfect urban machine.

Inexpensive, small, nimble, easy on gas, simple, and you could fix most anything with a pliers and a screwdriver.

There were several instances of names causing products not to sell well in foreign countries, but the Chevy Nova was not one of them.

--Decimal Cat

That's a fascinating tidbit, but when did I say the Nova didn't sell well? I merely pointed out that GM has already used a name which has an undesirable meaning in a language other than English.

Given enough road to gather speed on, I guess that a Citroen 2CV could run with just about anything up to about 50 mph. The only thing is that most other vehicles would have to have the parking brake on.

One nice thing about it (I guess) is that, because it contained a lot of wood, when it was ready for the junk yard you could use a lot of it to build a fire for a weenie roast. Just think, if you were walking and one hit you, the main concern would pobably be splinters. They were easy to pick out at night too. All you had to do was look for the bouncing headlights (did they even have shocks?). They didn't come with reclining seats (did they?) but if you wanted the seats to recline, just push hard on the seatback and bingo! But with all the great features on this car, the best one had to be the mechanical brakes (no pesky brake bleeding required).

I've only seen one of these in The US and it had been modified to comply with federal and state law (but hey, maybe we should import them). I'm guessing that the French looked at this car as their model T. I believe that in the mid-sixties, this car sold for about $600 new (I could be wrong on that).

undesirable

Sorry. . guess this is what happens when I answer posts after having been at work all day.

Still, just before anyone decided to make a claim like that, I thought I'd nip it in the bud. Though another hobby of mine is classic computers, and although I can't confirm this, I've heard that the Commodore PET didn't sell well in spanish-speaking countries because "pet" apparently means "fart" in spanish. . (also haven't confirmed this, but any spanish speakers are welcome to jump in any time. )

--Decimal Cat

re 2CV; Oh... the interior was sparse ! I believe the seats were woven cane.... no crank on the window... they folded. You could start it with a crank if the battery failed. And I swear, it had a "rubber-band" suspension.

But, in post WWII it was the French "every mans" car. And in better times, it was "every students car"

In many European cities, where the streets are narrow, it's common to parallel park with 2 wheels up on the sidewalk. I can remember seeing a 2CV nudge up to a 10"? high curb, and I'd swear, it lifted a tire and got right up .....

So homely.... it was loveable !

Can't confirm or deny this...fart is one word they don't really teach in Spanish class.

Then Spanish class isn't really practical, is it? I've always wondered what the point of censoring certain words is? If the class is useful at all, it should be teaching all words, regardless of meaning. It's not like those who speak Spanish won't cuss or swear, just because YOU learned the language in school instead of being immersed in it. -Dave

Exactly ! They SHOULD have taught us swears in Spanish, but they didn't. In my Scandinavian culture class the teacher is from Sweden I think and someone said something and she had no idea what it meant even though she can rattle off some of our swears.

The translation to spanish of fart is "pedo", and is unlikely to be confused with PET, this word (pedo) is used in Mexico, I don´t know if in other countries is different.

And the worst example is when you see a subtitulated movie, in the audio they say f*** and they translate it as "maldicion" (damm), it just looks absurd.

If you want to know some words just write the ones that you´ll like translated

Elias Rocha

"Dave C." escribió en el mensaje news:u3jkb.1990$ snipped-for-privacy@newsread3.news.pas.earthlink.net...

The Renault 4 CV was the post-World War II "everyman's car." The Citroen 2 CV was the later, loveable "ugly duckling" with lawnmower-like repairability.

You're right, it did have "lawnmower-like reliability". The real problem was that the car was truly "unsafe at any speed". I was in the military when I was in France and we were not allowed to own a Citroen

2CV or 4CV or even, for that matter, ride in one. They were the only cars that had that restriction on them. But, as was brought up, they were light enough so that if you got stuck, you and a few of your friends could pick the car up and carry it to a better location.