Contrôle technique — passed!

I took the car in this morning. The man in charge at the inspection station checked the lights and then looked under the hood (at I don't know what).

Then he drove the car into the garage so that the two front wheels were stopped on two rubber pads in the floor. Sitting at the wheel, he used a remote control to activate the pads, which vibrated and bounced violently, fast at first, and then more and more slowly.

Then he drove the car forward until the back wheels were on the pads and did the same thing. The car shook and bounced but not too much, I guess.

In between vibrating the front end and the back end, he drove the front wheels down into a little recess in the floor that had rollers in it. He started the car, which is a front-wheel-drive model, and gunned the motor. The wheels spun and the rollers rolled. After vibrating the rear, he drove the rear wheels into the roller-equipped recess and turned on the roller so that the back wheels spun really fast.

After all that, he drove the car over one of those underground pits that make the old pneumatic racks obsolete. I don't know what he did underneath the car, but five minutes later he came and told me everything checked out fine.

« Tout est impeccable là-dessus », he said. Everything is impeccable. I paid my 60 euros and drove on home. He never said a word about the brakes or the tires.