I heard again in December 2011 from Volker Schmidt, who I had met earlier in the year at the 50th anniversary event at the Nürburgring in Germany, and whose van also showed up in the images from the Paris flashmob in August. He told me a tale of his latest purchase (above), and those of his friends:

'...yes, I did go to Paris to celebrate the Renault 4's real birthday on 3rd August. It's sad that only about 10 cars showed up, but it was still a lot of fun. We even crossed the bridge to that island in the Seine where the factory buildings had been.

'The week after that me and the other Volker went to France on holiday. We drove all the way to Biarritz in the southwest in Volker's Volkswagen baywindow and to Lourdes in order to get a bottle of holy water for our radiators. However, we were sent off the place before we could get any because we had brought the dog. And they are interdit there. On the way back we went through the Dordogne and that's where we bought our first souvenir: an early GTL for Volker's sister. Cheap, hardly any rust. Hardly any paint left because of the sun. They have already started restoring it by now. And further north, close to Poitiers, I saw a red 1984 TL parked in front of a Renault dealership. The car looked excellent. I walked in, asked how much it was (too much) and bought it.

'Two weeks after we came back home we went back there again to pick the two cars up. We put Anke's car on a trailer, and a friend who had come along bought a third 4l, and then we all went back to Germany. Too bad only the left front brake of my car worked, and the [third] car had a serious problem with the radiator. So we had to stop several times to flush it at a car wash. It took us two and a half days to get home.

'We named my new car Bernadette. I guess that after having been to Lourdes before (and having secretly prayed to find a nice Renault 4) that was a sensible thing to do.'