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Comment by mrb | Hacker News Reader

I immediately assumed this article was about the French movie Le Corniaud (1965) in which a 2CV falls apart in 250 pieces in an accident—this scene specifically: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnLj5Xo4zBc&t=19s It became one of the most iconic scene of French comedy movies. To prepare the scene, the special effects engineer sawed off the car in 250 pieces, reattached every piece with hooks, and secured the hooks with "explosive bolts". At the right moment, the actor driving the car pushed a button to trigger the (tiny) explosives which made the car fall apart. Here is a French article about it: https://2cv-legende.com/expo-de-la-2cv-du-film-le-corniaud-a...

PS: the French wikipedia article on the movie has a picture of the explosive bolts they used: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Corniaud#L'accident_de_la_2...

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The one I thought of was the Silver Hornet from Revenge of the Pink Panther:

https://youtu.be/0z-FtAMg6Vw?si=zGsEnyt4NKtsMnLb

Even though I’ve seen many different versions of this gag, they are all still funny to me.

This seems very much like an homage to the French film example, just done less well.

By the way, I always wondered why we got modern versions of the Mini and the Beetle, but not the 2CV.

Was one 20 years ago, Citroen c5 or c3 or something. Maybe still is.

It doesn't have the iconic 2CV look ...

Nor do the new mini ever had the original mini look. The Daihatsu Trevis was much closer to the Issigonis Mini look than the new mini ever was.

I may be wrong but I don't think the 2cv has a design that can translate as easily to a newer version the same way as the beetle design could without being completely denatured. I think it would be easier to build a modern HY looking van.

The first generation C3 (FC/FN) was close to the 2CV. There was as well the C3 Pluriel, where the top could be removed, a little bit like the 2CV.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citro%C3%ABn_C3

I guess the answer depends on which aspect of the 2CV is being replicated in the new version.

If its "outrageously small but can still take you and a goose to market", Citroën have a tiny little electric vehicle, the Ami, today.

If its "something simple enough that a farmer can weld the panels themselves", I fear those days are long gone, in the same way that the OG Land Rover Defender is no longer a car you can wrench on. The spiritual heir of such cars is probably a toyota hilux(?). Modern safety standards and the presence of complex electronics beneath every surface, to say nothing of the more complex sheet metal shapes, probably stop that idea in its tracks.

There's still simple cars being produced but they're aimed at the Chinese and Indian markets, same with motorcycles. Example is (was?) the Tata Nano (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tata_Nano), at $2500 a very affordable and simple car, mainly aimed at motorcycle/scooter drivers.

There’s the Ineos Grenadier[1]

> The Grenadier was designed to be a modern replacement of the original Land Rover Defender, with boxy bodywork, a steel ladder chassis, beam axles with long-travel progressive-rate coil spring suspension (front and rear), and powered by a BMW B58 inline six turbocharged engine.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ineos_Grenadier

It is a lot more complicated than a defender though, isn't it. It has electronics!

For Defender there is Ineos Grenadier https://ineosgrenadier.com/

The Hilux went the other way: you can apply wrench to nut, but the odds of you needing to do so recede into the distance.

Well since we're talking about Citroen I'll say where is the button I can press to make the car raise up 20 cm :-D Always loved watching my uncle come visit in their CX. We'd always wait to see the car start and lift up.

I thought one defining feature was the innovative front-to-rear linked suspension well suited for the poor road conditions in rural France of the fifties. Allegedly you could ride the car fairly comfortably across a freshly ploughed field.

Roads are mostly in better shape today, but in remote places of California there are still secondary roads where long-travel suspension is of benefit (partly explaining the popularity of pick-up trucks there).

As someone who fixes basically everything until you can no longer tell it is a ship of thesis, I don't think complexity or safety features are the problem so much as not designing for or expecting someone to fix something in combination with extreme penny pinching in manufacture, so that there isn't enough material to anything for repairs to be done reasonably. If something breaks, the original material was at such a bare-minimum thickness and/or low quality alloy or plastic to start with that even the smallest defect in repair is a problem.

Its like trying to fix a single broken strand in a spider web, even with the tiniest thread you can find and the most delicate hands and tools, any manipulation of the web at all is likely to cause even more defects and any successful patch job will need to be way over-kill compared to what was originally broken. You can't just fix that one thread that broke, you gotta throw a large patch over the entire area and hope that the original spider thread designs that were undamaged will be able to hold up against your much stronger patch job.

Because the 2CV is mostly replaced by the entire crossover and compact SUV market segment.

https://2cev.co.uk/ showed up on ev-youtube last year (but other than the drive train, it's going out of it's way to not actually be modern... the 2cv aesthetic of "you think a VW Bug is too fancy" kind of limits the options.)

Well but the modern Mini and Beetle are related to the classics in name only, not in spirit.

I'm not sure how to translate this line: « Ah ben maintenant elle va marcher beaucoup moins bien, forcément ! » (Bourvil reportedly improvised it, causing de Funès to start laughing and bow his head to hide it).

Google Translate: “Ah well now it’s going to work a lot less well, of course!”

Deepl:

- It's going to work much less well.

- It's going to run much less smoothly.

- It's going to run a lot less smoothly.

None of these suggestions sounds good to me (in case it isn't clear I'm not a native English speaker).

All four sound fine to my native ears. "It's going to run ..." is most natural when talking about a vehicle. (French if I recall does not distinguish "working" from "running" for machines generally.)

Thanks.

While the primary meaning of 'marcher' is 'to walk', it can be used for machines and vehicles indeed. 'Rouler' is for vehicles only. Interestingly in English the verb 'to run' is used, suggesting higher speed.

The expression “to work better” is quite common but I don't remember seeing “to work less well”. And as I was taught that « plus grand » translates to “taller” but « moins grand » to “not as tall as”, I expected something more involved.

Yes, I might naturally say "It's no longer going to run as smoothly." But, to me, phrasing it as "It's going to run much less smoothly" adds to the humor by suggesting that it will to _some_ degree still run "smoothly" (when in fact it won't run at all).

Marcher here means "work", "function".

Something like "Oh well now it will run a lot less well, obviously." Seems like the more or less literal translation.

"a lot less well" is the awkward part, a more natural construction would be a negation "is not going to run well" or something like that.

The Google one seems dead on, except it should be gendered, native English refers to boats and cars as female gender:

“Ah well, now she'll work a lot less well, of course!”

Since you mentioned Google and Deepl, here's O1:

“Ah well, obviously she’s gonna run a lot less well now!”

“Ah well, looks like she’ll be running a lot less well, naturally!”

My own thoughts on google were replace work with run, replace it with she, and I wasn't sure about of course, versus, say, naturally. My own would have been:

“Ah well, now she'll work a lot less well, naturally!”

The context is that the 2CV driver is fussing to the Rolls driver who bumped him to make it fall apart. It keeps the Galois humor of a 2CV running well ever, and the naturally rhymes with that.

// English native, FSL here

Super impressive ! Thanks for sharing.

Similar (albeit a bit heavier from the all paperwork) explosive bolts are user for stage separation in launch vehicles (rockets).

That scene would've been a lot more impressive if wasn't edited like Liam Neeson jumping over a fence, haha

I also thought first about the 2CV in Le Corniaud (1965) :)

I had no idea that explosives were involved!

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