Why are all cool machines from Germany or France? 10

[curiousmechanical]

Due to the nature of my work, I get to travel around quite a bit and visit many company's facilities. I see a lot of very complex automated machines (very cool stuff) all over the place. Mostly high speed injection molding (making plastic bottles), filling, and packaging machinery. Everytime I ask someone at these companies where the machines come from, their answer seems to always be "from Germany" or "from France" for some reason. Now I know the Germans have an excellent reputaion for engineering. Does France as well? Why isn't the U.S designing and building these machines? Are we not as advanced? Or we more expensive? I know we probibly DO design SOME of them, but it just doens't seem like many.

Does anyone have any insight on this?

 

[WGJ]

Apologies offered.

Bill

 

[ScottyUK]

Based on my Laguna,

[li]Anything in the engine bay which you might want to change is obstructed by as many sharp objects as the designer could cram in there;[/li]
[li]The electrics are reasonably well protected from water, except those bits which might actually come into contact with water;[/li]
[li]It is necessary to dismantle most of the interior to replace one blown lamp on the console;[/li]
[li]The jack is made of Plasticine;[/li]
[li]Central locking does just that. Central unlocking was clearly an option not fitted to mine;[/li]
[li]The tow hitch is made from recycled Renault jacks. That's why they snap when you're under tow.[/li]

Still, it had over 200k miles on an 1.8l petrol engine, and the engine was in very good shape when I sold it. Nice long distance mile-muncher.







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Sometimes I only open my mouth to swap feet...

 

[epoisses]

Renault's clear objective is to sell cars cheap and make money on the maintenance. There is hardly anything nowadays you can do yourself on a Renault. E.g. if you blow a headlight you have to go see the dealer, it's incredible but true. The keycard system looks great in the showroom, but if you lose the card they have the guts to charge 200 Euros for a new one.
I drove my colleague's Laguna and several other recent Renaults but I don't like any of them from driver's point of view (steering, gearbox and other pretty essential things).
But getting back to the OP they are cool machines, as long as someone else pays the garage bills.