French cars, Italian cars, gone from these shores for good reason. The only way to make them worth a damn is to combine them, a French car styled by the Italians.
The 1978 Renault R17 Gordini (1.7 liter hemi in a targa-hatchback-coupe anyone?) I owned was one of only two cars I sold for more than I paid. and I regret selling it to this day.
I'd get over that loss with a Citroen SM...can you help?

I'd like one of those R17s, used to have the sedan it was based on in the family, a R12TS it was gonna be my first car and I drove it a couple of times under supervision, and did a crap load of work on it. However, it turned out some suspension bushings needed to pass safety for the rear suspension were unavailable, or with a 2 month lead time from France and at an exorbitant price or something, so it ended up going to the wreckers. :(

Can't figure why in particular some of the Renaults that got over here had a bad rap, unless it was lousy mechanics who only know the GM way of doing things messing them up all the time. I would say however, that euro automatics never were as refined or reliable as US ones, and probably made the cars seem desperately underpowered. But four on the floor and a revvy engine is where it's at there.

Personally I quite like the french philosophy of suspension design, or at least how it used to be, lots of travel, lots of clearance, they feel like they're gonna tip over on the corners, but that is really all just body roll, everything else stays on the road, usually for a lot longer than the driver has the stones to try pushing it. So they can feel "wallowy" but can actually be thrown around quite a bit and soak up rough pavement with ease. Since the 90's they all tended to be a lot firmer and flatter.

I had an R12 with the 1289 cc engine, rusty as hell but a fine car for a family, good FE and excellent suspension.

A friend had an R-17 Gordini with Weber 40 DCOE conversion (from Bosch FI) and it ran pretty hard until it holed a piston due to detonation.

Another friend (still) has a Renault 8 Gordini, but that's another story.....