RENAULT WORLD TOUR

I had this rather amazing idea to travel around the world with my venerable 97 Renault Mégane. I wrote to Renault about it and I an the middle of an amusing correspondence with them (which might still be going on, if they ever answer me)

This was my original letter to them:

Dear Sir or Madame,

My name is Mitja Iršič. I am writing to you in order to present you with a proposition for cooperation, but first, allow me to reveal a few important details about my love affair with your products.

My dad first bought a good old Renault 4 in the eighties, which served us well for nearly a decade before we sold it off to an elderly couple who still uses it to this day. He bought a second Renault – a used 1997 Mégane Classic – in 2000. I inherited it a few years later and it is still my daily vehicle of choice 13 years later. With 203.000 kilometres behind it – a lot of them in heavy duty stop-and-go traffic – the old girl shows no signs of letting go. The K series 1.6 liter 4-stroke under the hood is purring like a kitten just like it did almost 17 years ago when some lucky Frenchman first turned the key on the production line in Douai. In nearly two decades of service, I only changed parts of the exhaust, the battery, brakes, rear shock absorbers and the timing belt. Below the threshold of even normal wear and tear.

The clutch remains as is. Front shock absorbers, various pumps, seals, electronics, radiator grille; just about every part's manufacturing stamp is dated back to either 1996 or 1997. It never failed to start early in the morning, even in temperatures that would make Antarctica feel like a tourist resort in the Seychelles. It never left me on the side of the road somewhere in Germany, waiting to get picked up by an ADAC truck, with a bunch of smart-ass Germans telling me to buy an Audi. In short, you gentlemen made a fine product all those years ago.

Now that this is out of the way, let me tell you about my proposition. I want to take my Mégane  and drive it around the globe! I would start in my hometown of Slovenske Konjice in Slovenia and travel across Hungary, Romania, Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, People's Republic of China, then hop on a ship to Los Angeles and drive all the way to New York after which I would take another ship to the Atlantic coast of France, driving to either Paris or Douai where the Mégane  was made back in the 90s and where its 3rd generation is still made today. As you can imagine, a trip like this is expensive and I have already contacted several local companies here – some from your own supply chain – who would partially sponsor me, and this is where you come in. I would like you to back me up as my main sponsor. Not only that – I would like to be actively involved in the marketing of your brand in Europe and beyond, even after my trip is done. I am after all endorsing your product, your build quality, workmanship and engineering prowess with my proposed adventure. In these days of plastic planes with exploding lithium ion batteries, freezing computers and failed spacecraft, what resonates more in the mind of the consumer than an Average Joe showing them that a product can last for decades of every day (ab)use? Of course, skeptics might say something in the lines of "but this is an old simplistic car without modern electronic gimmickry that always goes wrong". However, the way I see it – it is precisely because of cars like this that the story of brand reliability gets written. I am a graduated jurist, however I have been working in marketing for years and I therefore possess thorough understanding of the matters concerning brand image and awareness.

 After all, even today's Mercedes buyers often still cite their grandfathers W123 as their inspiration to get a new E class. Not to mention the K series engine which got its introduction in the Mégane  I would pull my stunt in is still used in your line of cars today as you well know (although with many modifications). The same men and women still screw together today's 3rd generation of the car as well as others in the model line-up. The same engineers design and extensively test it. The same corporate structure is responsible for its distribution and awareness across the globe under the same brand. So my Mégane  is after all a testament to your abilities. I want to promote these abilities. What is more trust inducing than the promise of good, solid nuts-and-bolts engineering that a brand can provide? Renault’s current advertising motto is "Quality Made", is it not? Let’s show that this always was and continues to be the case. Let me help you in this endeavour with my small contribution. Sponsor me. It will be more effective than a thousand ads with dancing robots and SUVs jumping over fake crests. It will be something real people can identify with.  Something which would make them purchase a brand new Renault instead of a Peugeot or a Ford because … “… did you see that old Mégane  driving through a dusty old gravel road in Kazakhstan? Now that’s quality.”

In conclusion, please find attached a few pictures of the car itself as well as my resume. I will disclose a detailed plan of my project in case you respond and are interested in my proposition.  I'm looking forward to hearing from you.

Yours faithfully,

Mitja Iršič

Renault surprisingly replied! I never expected anything more than a randomly generated message. This is what their girl Vanessa wrote: 

 

Hello,

Thank you for your interest in Renault.

Thank you for your proposal regarding the sponsorship of your project, and for inviting Renault to participate in this initiative.
We regret that we are unable to take up your offer. Renault has decided to base its public relations strategy around core business themes : road safety, automobile sports, and environment. Although your project is interesting, our involvement would not be consistent with the PR strategy outlined above.
We appreciate your understanding, and wish you the very best of luck in the organization of this action.

The Renault.com Team
Vanessa Delettre
RENAULT
Corporate Communications

Since they were so nice I've decided to reply them back:

Dear Vanessa,

Thank you very much for your reply to my proposal. I was expecting either nothing at all or some randomly generated thanks-for-your-interest-in-Renault BS. Thus I really appreciate an actual response.

However I would like to point out some parts in your reply with which I have issues with in hope it might improve your PR strategy in the future. On the other hand you can take it as useless layman advice.


You said your "core business themes" are road safety, automobile sports and environment. Fair enough. But I would like to dwell a little further on these themes.


Road safety: Sure it is an important point of interest for any roadcar manufacturer, but at the same time it is not a selling point in this day and age when pretty much ANY car on the road gets 5 stars in the EuroNCAP. It surely is one of those outdated features of advertising, sort of like promoting a car that has electronic injection, is it not?

Automobile sports: Renault surely has a pedigree in the pinnacle of motor-sport ever since the 70s and it should be celebrated. However at the same time, is making it a core business theme for a brand which has always been renowned for making comfortable family cruisers really a sensible thing to do?

Environment: It is a sad fact that pretty much no one cares about the environment outside  of countries where they actually offer some financial stimulus for environmentally conscious vehicles. So targeting customers with environment is the same as targeting them with new laser welding techniques in production. They simply do not care.

I am not saying what you labelled as your "core business themes" are not be advertised at all but at the same time I am convinced your average customer would appreciate reliability above all of them, especially in these times of an ongoing financial and social crisis in Europe - which is your key market. It will also put me in an uncomfortable position, if -  while traveling around the globe in the Megane - I get interviewed by TV stations around the world and they ask me why I am not backed up by the factory that made it. I would not want to explain to them that reliability is "not one of your core business themes". Since you were kind enough to actually reply to my proposal I will just tell them I never contacted you.

Lastly don't take these issues that I pointed out as me trying to tarnish the work you are doing. I am convinced you are experts in your field and will continue to spread the message of the brand in EU and beyond.

Sincerely,
Mitja

I am still waiting patiently for their reply. I expect it somewhere between 2050 and the end of space-time.

 

AIRBUS

Ever since I can remember I always wanted to work for Airbus. With my profession that would be just about as achievable as winning the lottery five times in a row, but I still sent them a sappy CV as a long-shot. I'm expecting a call from John Leary any day now. :-)

The sappy letter:

As a child one of my favourite places to visit was the Maribor Airport. It was and still is a small-town airport. Then in the days of decline of Yugoslavia it rarely saw any traffic, with just one Swissair DC-9 doing touch-and-gos every other day as part of flight training. Yet that sole DC-9 and high-pitched spooling of its Pratt&Whitney JT8D turbines was enough to get my imagination going. I would imagine it going to exotic far away locations after each take-off, despite knowing it will just make a go around and land in a few minutes. I would put myself in place of those lucky engineers and line-workers  fortunate enough to assemble this marvelous colossal feat of engineering. It was then that I got hooked for life on civil aviation industry.

Why do I love it? Well it's a number of things. First it's an industry which allows common people to experience the awe-inspiring engineering perfection of modern state-of-the-art machines costing as much as 300 million euros for as little as 100 euros they pay for a ticket. It brings an average person closer to the cutting edge of human technology. In this aspect aviation is absolutely unique.  Hardly anyone has a chance to experience the acceleration of a formula 1 race car, yet almost anyone with 20euros in their pocket can take a no-frills flight, listen to the whine of a multi-million dollar turbo-fan jet engine as it spools up on take-off and see our world as it was never intended to see. There is no other activity in history of mankind that has been longed for quite as much as joining birds in the sky.  It seems like we have an inexplicable natural urge to see the world from above, despite our roots in the African savannah which placed us firmly on terra firma.  We gazed enviously at birds of prey soaring elegantly over mountains and canyons, until our endless drive to join them pushed us towards finding a way to subjugate the laws of science.

The way we managed to subjugate them, is in fact what I love about aviation the most. Many pioneers of flight were killed. First flight of the Wright brothers was in fact shorter than the length of a modern airliner. Yet we persevered. Steps were slow and painful, but we  overcame them one by one. Per aspera ad astra. Today's aviation knowledge, much like any other human endevour, stands on the shoulders of giants - not just of aviation, but of science as a whole. Extraordinarily sophisticated modern commercial airplanes like the Airbus A380 could never leave the drawing boards, if they didn't bring out something special in humanity. An understanding that giant industrial undertakings like this can only materialize if we work together.

An Airbus A380 was designed, manufactured and put into production by engineers from various European countries, whose grandparents and even parents slaughtered each other during the bloodshed of WW2 just six decades ago. Yet projects like these united them, their talents, dreams and visions into one singular drive towards perfection. Designers in Broughton, UK and Toulouse, France were working hand in hand with their peers in Hamburg, Germany, to create a monument of contemporary European Union. These men and women are a symbol of our true greatness, as a species. A small but significant peek into what we can achieve when we work together as brothers and sisters united in overcoming ambitious challenges  we set for ourselves. But also a glimmer of hope that these kind of international collaborations might pave the way to humanity of tomorrow - humanity that knows no ethnic, political or social prejudice and works together as one species. Thus I hope aviation and other human endeavours on the edges of scientific discovery will help us get that one step closer to this elusive multi-cultural dream which is so easy to embrace and understand, yet so horrendously difficult to achieve in a divisive world we live in. This is why I love the aviation industry. This is why I want to be a part of your team.