Jon Meyer wrote:

Sorry my mistake, got confused by the fact that the
Alliance 34 is made by Pegase (a copy of the SF34).

I know all about the quality of french construction
though, I fly an ASW20F and drive a Peugeot......neither
is as well made as their german equivalents :-)


For the ASW20F i cannot comment, i have seen some which were in apparent good
state. Anyways, at the time Centrair had little experience of building
gliders, and the ASW20 were built under German license. After that they did
the Pegase, which is, in my opinion, a great success. The wings were designed
by the French office Onera, and this is a glider which has basically the same
performances as the German LS4, is more fun or less fun than the LS4 according
to personal taste, but was surely much cheaper.
As far as cars are concerned, Peugeot cannot be compared fairly with Mercedes
and BMW which are in a completly different category for a lot of reasons.
First and foremost, prices are in a completly different range, second these German
cars are propulsions while Peugeot are tractions, meaning that they don't
address the same problems. The aim of Peugeot is to produce cars that people
can afford (with European salaries), are comfortable and secure (good secure
dynamical qualities). With some bad faith i could say exactly the opposite of
the above German ones. Now compare Peugeot cars with VWs or Opel cars, which
are in the same category, and deciding the best is very debatable. To say the
truth, all the European constructors buy parts in the same pool (Bosch being a
well known example), use same technics, etc. Frequently the so called German
car or French car is built in Spain or whatever. What is obviously true is
that German firms do considerably better research and work in the motor
department. Clearly Porsche, BMW, and Mercedes develop fantastic motors, Japan
firms do the same, and French firms don't. I suppose that the strict speed
limitations in France explain a lot about that, but this is sad nonetheless.



--
Michel Talon