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previous rants
rants: | the renault ads | the other ads | pointless comments
The writings below provide a record of my previous wittering, beginning at the turn of the millennium following the launch of this site. If nothing else, having it all here can act as my own archive of embarrassment at my state of verbal and literal health in times gone by.
8cc (not a poor 10CC tribute band)
Recently, the British government introduced changes to the road tax pricing structures, in an effort to reward drivers of cars with smaller engines for their insecurity. All well and good, one might presume. Anyone with an engine size of 1100cc or less gets about fifty-five quid off their annual tax bill. Guess what? Most Renault 4s in this country are 1108cc, so no money for us. Arse.
So, I wrote to the Transport Secretary to express my disappointment at the changes:
Dear Mr Prescott,
blah blah blah blah blah Renault 4 blah blah blah blah blah blah tax blah blah blah blah 8cc
blah blah blah blah blah blah 55 quid blah blah blah blah blah.
This is the reply I received only yesterday:
Dear Peter,
I sympathise with your position, and that of others who own Renault 4s, but I just spent the fifty-five quid
at the chip shop, and cannot give any assurances that the money can be returned.
P.S. Try the pea fritters.
More grind, less swing
Though I risk losing out on any future corporate backslapping niceties between me and Renault, I have to comment on their recent advertising campaign for the new Clio. Why? Because they've arsed about with a classic Jimmy Smith track for the TV ads.
I'm never all that enthused when one of my favourite bits of music is sabotaged for some massive corporation's interests, not least because it cheapens the image of whatever the original artist was trying to project. But I might have allowed an exception on this occasion, as I guess (and hope) the master Smith will have been adequately compensated, and it will lure a new audience to appreciate his music, if only they hadn't chopped it up into bitesize chunks to suit their own needs. If I want to hear The Organ Grinder's Swing, I want to hear it as it is, not spoon-fed to me in soundbites. Just stick with Nicole, that's what I say, you can't go wrong there!
Perhaps I'm just bitter. When I grow up, I want to be one of those moany old blokes who writes to the local paper complaining about students and bicycles and stuff, and loud music and take-away cartons.
I don't really. But I do worry.
More grind, less friends
It has come to my attention that post-'83 Renault 4s have a problem regarding the suspension. There is a reduced wheel to wheel-arch clearance, and the suspension to radius arm distance is the same as the pre-'83 cars. This can cause the rear wheels to rub against the body when there is too much weight in the car. It has happened on both my R4s. Recently, I was carrying two passengers and some bags, and it just couldn't handle it. There was an awful grinding on the driver side during every left turn, even on fairly large-degree left-hand bends. My excuses of 'sorry, I can carry one person but the car cannot handle any extra weight since the tyres rub against the body' are inevitably interpreted by others as 'he doesn't like me', or 'he thinks I'm fat'. I cannot believe Renault could have overlooked such a problem. Does anybody else experience this, and are there any jobs that can be done to improve this that aren't too drastic? Or will I have no friends by next year?
Off camera
Aaaarrrrgggghhhh!!!!!!! It's a good job I've waited a couple of weeks after the event before writing this, else it would be unreadable for countless expletives.
I had a 36-exposure film in my camera, which had been in place since the millennium. It contained pictures of that night, taken at the very second of the new century. I'd decided to only use the film sparingly for photos that were really good. I took several snaps of my old Renault 4 - the last pictures of that car - some of which were spectacularly shot against a backdrop of the new Lowry Centre in Salford, from a spot across the river which is now inaccessible. I returned there with the new car and shot some pictures at dawn against an amazing green, lilac and peach sky, waiting for over an hour for the sun to rise to get the perfect image. It had the only picture of the old and new cars together. It had pictures from Glastonbury which were to be a treasured memory, one being a beautiful photo of my friends sat up by the stone circle in front of the sun rising on the last night. And to finish the film over a year later, I drove out to a couple of picturesque spots in the Pennines near Manchester, on a day when snow covered the peaks. I found a wonderful vista overlooking dramatic white hills and valleys, with a clear blue sky and my new R4 in the foreground.
When I pressed the film rewind button, the motors whirred for ages but the counter remained on 36. Back at home in the dark, I opened the camera and found the film completely wound back. Upon receiving the film back from processing, my worst fears were confirmed: it is a drop-in load camera, and the film had never actually caught on as it should do when I'd inserted it, despite the camera appearing to function completely normally all along, with the counter turning, motors winding and flash, err.... flashing. Admittedly, the camera is ten years old and was reasonably cheap, but it's still in good condition. I will never trust it or any other automatic camera again, they're rubbish. It was a Fuji, so if you see their airship, shoot the bugger down on my behalf.
I realise that my telling of this story will only induce snide laughter amongst all those of you who think I deserve some kind of retribution for creating this site, but I still need to get it off my chest, which, incidentally, is playing up and giving me much grief today for some unknown reason. So, all the glorious images you would have been able to view on the My Pics and My Cars pages are now lost forever, trapped hazily in a fragment of my brain tissue, never to be released to the world. If you're any good at ESP you can try having a look at them but please don't probe anything else, it's quite nasty in there.
More cash, less gas
Quick, call the police! This is serious. The webmaster is actually about to say something positive!
I thought it a bit mean not to make an update to this section in light of the very first rant I ever made at the top of the page. As you may know, the cost of road tax in the UK was cut quite considerably a couple of years back for anybody running a vehicle of less than 1100cc. And this was no use for Renault 4GTL owners who have an engine capacity of 1108cc, just pushing them over the threshold. Since last year, however, the government has made two consecutive increases to this limit, first to 1200cc, and now to 1500cc or thereabouts. This means all R4 owners (barring some nutters who try and shove a Boeing 747 under their bonnet) now qualify for the reduced rate, saving themselves up to £55 a year. I have not exactly been full of praise for the present government since they took power in 1997, but this is good news and I was able to claim two backdated rebates.
Before owning my first R4 - and first car - Angelica, I was quite anti-car, and I still am to some extent, as is not surprising when you read some of the stuff around this site. I just take a particular delight in Renault 4s and other older models that have some character. And I can't deny the freedom the car has given me is great, considering the restrictions we have in our lives in many other respects. It's therefore somewhat hypocritical of me to say I'm interested in green issues, but I genuinely would like to see much more consideration given to all such matters. What I don't want to see, on the other hand, is cars being priced out of the reach of ordinary people and becoming a luxury for the middle and upper classes in this country, so tax reductions like this are welcome. The cost of fuel in this country, however, is absurd, but given the rapidly depleting oil reserves worldwide, and the environmental damage caused by our exploitation of this resource, something needs to be done to scale down our use of petrol, and if this is the only short term way of doing it, then so be it.
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