My tried and trusted and much loved 30-ye&r old Citroen 2CV -- 'Oranje' -- wouldn't start today, alas

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Comment by Valentine Mark Herman on December 26, 2014 at 8:06pm

If it's like this one, you could fit one Oranje under the bonnet, one inside the car, and a third in the boot/trunk:

Oranje is on holiday now, and won't be back on the road until 2015.

"If I had a hammer:I'd hammer in the morning/I'd hammer on Bill Gates' head..."

and then I'd start hammering Apple Inc

Comment by Linda French on December 26, 2014 at 7:53pm

My Cutlass was 1990, dark red with dark red interior. (sigh) I love a big car -- great big boat of a car. Now I have a minivan with a parasitic draw that I have to get out and fix.  Just thinking about it makes me want to take a nap. And I can't use anything as trusty and simple as a hammer. I'll save the hammer for the computer when it's making "ghost dings."  --Linda

Comment by Katerina Nikoltsou (MomKat) on December 26, 2014 at 2:38pm

Just gotta loooove Oranje...

and Lil' Red Bag :-)

Comment by Valentine Mark Herman on December 26, 2014 at 2:25pm

Bonjour, Linda! Yes it's almost completely non-electr(on)ic -- no ciggy lighter, no radio, no electric windows etc. It comes from the generation of cars that was built by 'a man with a screwdriver and a hammer', and should -- in theory, at least -- be repairable by a man with a screwdriver and a hammer. However, I am amazingly incomppetent at this sort of thing, but my friend Jurgen will, I hope, fix it for mpe when he gets back from his weekend skiing holiday. If I start to take it too bits I will never, ever, get it going again.

I looked up the Cutlass. Wow! they were big cars. Five generations of them too -- which generation was yours?

Comment by Linda French on December 26, 2014 at 5:39am

Such a pretty little Car! I love orange, too.  If it's 30 years old, then it was made before a lot of the electronic gadgetry was being put into cars, right? If so, you can work on it yourself? Hope it's revive-able for you.  --Linda

Comment by Valentine Mark Herman on December 26, 2014 at 4:59am

These cars are widely recognised as French classics -- as typical of France as the Eiffel Tower. You can get a bumper sticker for them that says (in translation) 'This is not a car, it is a piece of French history'.Here is what mine looks like (on a nice sunny day, when it was working!). 'Oranje' will, I hope, be celebrating her birthday next Spring:

And now for Oranje and Dean Marks:

Finally an 'aerial' photo of Oranje from my terrace looking down into the (non-) street that is Rue de la Vieille Fontaine:

('Oranje' means 'little orange' in Dutch...and as I bought her shortly after I moved from Holland to France, it seemed an appropriate name. before Oranjje, I had --for a couple of years -- a Porsche 944S, which was very fast indeed, but not as much fun as my 2CV)

The only American car I have really gotten to know is a 1971 Buick Skylark...but that's another story for another day. I'll have to look up the Cutlass.

Happy Boxing Day!

Comment by Linda French on December 26, 2014 at 2:18am

I googled some Citroen 2CV's to see what they are, but I can't quite tell about these photos. Are they interior?  We had an Olds cutlass for the last 15 years of its life.  Best car I ever had. Ran and ran, and started in cold weather, too.  It was really hard to let go of it when I got a different car, so I know a little of what you said of "tried and trusted and much loved."

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