Petr Kadaník

“My father certainly wasn’t what you’d call an ardent Communist. My father really was [in the Party - trans.] for these pragmatic reasons, which I had to acknowledge. And I can say, something of a life experience... They say that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, but I’d say that examples lead. But examples also lead in the negative sense of the word, when you have an example in a person you respect who had to - I’ll use the word - betray his beliefs just to sacrifice himself for his children, then I reckon that that’s a kind of example, or anti-example, that leads in such a way that from that time whenever someone told me... or when the topic was the Communist Party, I had a very clear and unambiguous opinion, which I’d never change.”

“If you want the car to have a natural feel to the driving, you have to set the suspension to match this frequency. That’s no problem because it’s an ordinary equation, spring resistance and weight, and that gives you the frequency, which is a constant. So that’s no problem, that can be done, although you do have to count with the fact that if you want a racing car and you need it to be low down, you can’t have long springs because you’d touch the ground, so you have to adapt it in those cases. That’s why I say that, for instance, the Renault is a good car for life, that it’s made to do what it needs to. So that’s one thing, and the other is the damping; it’s hard to measure, but you can feel it in the car when you’re driving. In some cars when you go over a bump, it jumps with you like this and then this. But if you were in a Citroën, for instance, a DS 19 - we had one in the test shop as well - you don’t feel anything, the car stays like this. And that’s hydropneumatic suspension.”