Almost forgot my Austin Maestro. In this country it was almost fault-free, but every single time I took it abroad it broke down.
I recall driving round remote parts of Luxembourg trying to remember the road number and the last village I had passed through in case it conked out again and I had to summon help. It broke down on a Sunday night on a by-pass in the middle of nowhere in Brittany. It broke down in Longuyon in Eastern France. On a day trip to Calais it broke down at the furthest point from the port at about the last possible moment I could get help and still make my ferry.
On a trip to Paris it was perfect, but we left the hotel with only my wife's car keys and she didn't have the petrol cap key on her ring, so we had to stop at a garage near Chartres to have the petrol cap removed and replaced so that we could top up the tank. Two months later, back near home, the petrol tank imploded with a loud bang. Apparently they hadn't fitted a ventilated one. I count that as another French incident.
In Eastern France, in the middle of nowhere as usual, it died on me again. I lifted the bonnet and saw wisps of smoke coming from something I couldn't identify. By now it was routine for me to carry a Haynes Manual with me on holiday. I identified the part as an "ignition amplifier" which I knew nothing about, but I was relieved to see that it had a label saying "Ducellier. Made in France". The local mechanic had one on a shelf, which he slotted in place in about two minutes .... after making us wait through the whole of his two hour lunch break to start work.
My father-in-law also drove a Maestro. In his case with an S-Series engine. Mine was the older R-Series. When we compared notes, every single part that had ever failed on mine was either substituted, upgraded, repositioned or, like the ignition amplifier, completely absent in the later S-Series. It felt like mine was a prototype and the S-Series was the real thing.
I can't account for how my Maestro behaved itself so well in this country, but it was an absolute pig whenever I took it abroad. One French mechanic once took one look and said "Ah, O-steen!" and made a spitting noise. You had to agree. Thankfully I speak French pretty well, so breaking down over there was little more scary than it would have been anywhere away from home in the U.K. That car certainly gave me a few holiday anecdotes.
