2012 roundup

2013-12-24T22:00:00+00:00

Have I made a mistake? Don't I mean 2013, which is almost at its end? Well no, actually, but I thought a brief summary of 2012 would be better late than never. As is probably evident given the delayed arrival of this post, there wasn't much in the way of interesting news to report last year, and only now I'm doing a very quick recap so as to not leave a hole in the archives. In fact, you could rightly rename this page 'olds'.

There were two major gatherings originally planned for 2012: the 4th 4L international, and the Festival Renault, both of which got postponed until the following year, the first in view of the enormous effort and expense that had been outlaid in organizing the 50th birthday in 2011.

I think those events sapped all my own energies too. On this site, not much changed, so I'll start off with a couple of bits that got added after the last news update at the end of 2011. Firstly, an absolutely 'Super' new Star Car as a result of a chance meeting up the road from my home in Lyon. Then, a couple of videos added to the Four on Film page. The first is a remade version of my old Reflexia crossing the Millau Viaduct, whilst the second features action from the German 50th anniversary gathering at the Nürburgring. 2012 kicked off with a revised Four Files page housing some hi-res wallpaper images rather than the desktop calendar of old. These photos are changed and rotated from time to time. The Boutique was updated to offer a selection of gifts with various popular designs picked from the past decade. Meanwhile, Renault launched a new marketing campaign using the title 'Renault 4 Plus' (referring to a 4-year warranty, service and finance scheme, not a revamped version of the R4) - something which inadvertently did pretty well in driving traffic to my own renault4.plus.com address :)

Finally, my own R4, Queen Geanine, celebrated her 25th anniversary shortly after passing her first French MOT (the dreaded Contrôle Technique) with flying colours. Then, after a long, arduous procedure featuring French bureaucracy at its infuriating finest, I finally got my car's registration transferred back over and by sheer coincidence, having had to get the Carte Grise (Registration Certificate) reproduced due to an error at my local Préfecture, the new version was issued and dated on my Renault 4's twenty-fifth birthday, like a sort of personalized greetings card for the car.

Renault 4-Play news and updates

2012 roundup