I'm pretty sure think they never did. From my experience of watching car adverts since the 1980s, UK television ads almost never crossed the Channel. French manufacturers often had big-budget launch campaigns with the same ad airing across the Continent back in the 1980s, but that didn't mean good stuff. Renault launched the 19 in 1988 with a Sergio Leone-directed western-style film that cost bundles, but the result was old-fashioned and a bit ridiculous. The same happened with the 1990 Clio launch ad, which compared the car to various red things, thanks to cutting edge CGI effects that have aged terribly.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2ocxw

Nicole and Papa it is not.

The first memorable french Clio ad came in 1992. It was topical, shot in Russia, and had a good slogan.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWXXzRwJIrE

A variation of the same campaign aired a couple years later, this time shot somewhere in an emirate. As far as I know, those ads were aimed at the french market, and other big european markets had their own Clio campaigns.

That's what other brands did, or still do. VW & Audi France often does its own thing, for instance. And I've seen quite a few Holland-only adverts in the past too, even for smaller brands like Suzuki or Daihatsu.

But Europe-wide campaigns still happen. The common denominator is their blandness. Mercedes-Benz with Nico Rosberg, Opel with Claudia Schiffer (or these horrible puppets from the Corsa ad), it's just a yawn-fest.

As for Belgium, where I'm from, it's more complicated. Small country, linguistically divided, and commercial advertising was banned until the late 1980s. This meant either cheap campaigns, or adaptations of foreign adverts. I remember we got this 1999 british Clio ad !

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYXRVtu8aVU

In recent times, national campaigns have been more common, but don't expect british levels of creativity.

Anyway, don't say "Va va voom !" to any Frenchman. They won't understand.