>How about the old Citren Dianne and Aimie - you very rarely see them nowadays.

Diane was a nice attempt to modernize the spaček (pron. spah-check, which is how we called the 2cv, and which is most probably also the original last name of the actress Sissy Spacek), and I'm still seeing it here and there on pictures in online newspapers back home. Never too popular, though.

Ami, however, was another very original car - one has to see it (specially the older version with the rear window tilted backwards) to appreciate it. It was very comfortable, comparable with other cars of the time which had an engine twice as big.

>>The R4, OTOH, looks as if it was designed with a spade. The ultimate insult to a R4 driver is when a passenger confuses the shift handle (which sticks out of the middle of the dashboard) with an umbrella handle.
>
>It was similar in the old Renault 4s. The French cars were a joke back in the day - very quirky and non-standard.

Um... yes, in the R4 my dad had for a while the turn signal was on the right side :). And the Citroën "shark" ID-19 (or "frog" as they called it elsewhere) had no break pedal - it was just a rod sticking out of the floor. The steering wheel had only one spoke. Ami's wheels had only three screws, anti-clockwise thread. Plus other original solutions.

And BTW, ID-19 was the first car that I know of to feature the swiveling headlights, connected to the steering mechanism. Now 35+ years later some other car is proud to reinvent that.

>I once got to drive an old Renault Dauphine, which did have an H gate (of sorts) only, when putting it into 1st or 2nd (R-H drive) you had to stray so far over into the passenger's side as to nearly emasculate him! :-)

I know a lady who nearly did that, in a Yugo, when she was learning how to drive. While trying to shift into reverse, she actually went for the wrong stick. Instructor didn't object.