Auto manufacturers are, by and large, a conservative bunch. They prefer to make well-reasoned decisions, avoiding rash moves that might ruffle a few feathers wherever possible. Renault threw that ethos out the window yesterday, issuing a stinging broadside at Rishi Sunak, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. It’s the cheekiest press release you’ll read this week.
Sunak’s stock was low going into the UK’s general election on the 4th of July. Recent years under the ruling Conservative Party had featured endless scandals and rapid-fire changes in leadership. Sunak was the latest in a long line who had hoped to right the ship. Ultimately, the public mood towards his leadership was resoundingly negative according to the polls, and a landside was expected to fleece the Conservatives of many of their seats come Thursday.
Renault’s astute marketing team saw an opportunity, and they went with it. They parked a Renault Master removals van outside 10 Downing Street, the official residence of the Prime Minister. “Moving in a hurry?” teased Renault. “We’ve got space for everything… including a Sky dish.”
This wasn’t just shot in some random industrial estate, either. Renault shot these pics right outside Number 10 Downing Street. They even dressed up a few removalists to really drive the message home.
The line about the Sky dish was a barbed reference to a widely-broadcast gaffe from the Conservative leader earlier this year. ““There’ll be all sorts of things that I would’ve wanted as a kid that I couldn’t have,” Sunak told ITV. “Famously, Sky TV, so that was something that we never had growing up actually.” The remark was poorly received as out of touch, and became a hot topic in the British media in the leadup to the election.
“Nobody likes moving,” noted a spokesperson for Renault. “But a spacious, economical and refined van like the Renault Master is perfect for ensuring that none of life’s essentials get left behind, even when you have to leave in a hurry.”
It’s rare for automakers to take cheeky potshots at political figures. Big corporations often prefer to keep politicians onside in the hopes that the legal and political environment will continue to favor their profitability. However, in this case, Renault’s marketing team likely realized they had nothing to lose.
The simple fact is that Sunak’s Conservatives were slated to lose hundreds of seats in a predicated Labour Party landslide on July 4. On the big day, that very scenario came to pass. Labour leader Keir Starmer has already declared victory. It’s expected the Labour party will claim over 400 seats in Parliament, with the Conservatives sinking to somewhere less than 150.
Labour set to win a general election landslide with majority of 170, according to exit poll for the BBC, ITV and Sky
If the forecast is accurate, it means Keir Starmer will become UK prime minister with 410 Labour MPs – 326 seats are needed for a majority#BBCElection live ⬇️
— BBC Breaking News (@BBCBreaking) July 4, 2024
As reported by 6 News, it’s believed Sunak will imminently announce his resignation as Conservative Party leader in the wake of the historic loss. If he does stay on, he’ll still have to leave 10 Downing Street, as his reign as Prime Minister is coming to an end. It might be worth seeing if Renault still has that van available, Rishi. Good luck with the move.
Image credits: Renault
P.S. If you’re new to UK politics, Sunak is indeed the leader of the Conservative Party. That is the party’s official name—not a statement on its political bent.
who’s chillin on the second floor in a sweatshirt and jeans?
Oh boy, I need to speak with my in laws who are conservative by Labour Party standards but wouldn’t tie themselves to the tories sinking ship. I wonder what they think of this
uhm, actually… the house they are parked in front of is not 10 Downing street. It is a look alike house, also in London, with the address 10 Adam Street. It’s a common selfie spot, as the real 10 downing street façade is closed to the public. You can tell the difference if you have been clued in. For instance, there’s a metal arch with a lamp in front of the door at 10 downing. Also the window rosette has less petals than the OG PM’s residence, and it doesn’t have a door knocker. Still the joke works just as well.
Fun! I’d like to see this done in other countries. Canada would be a bit of an investment for the novelty
I have been laughing about this since this afternoon.
Well done, Renault.
Just wait to see the upcoming shit show in the USA during our upcoming presidential ‘election’. You haven’t seen anything yet, soo, soo, sadly. At least y’all got 5 candidates to choose from so quit being a little cry baby. We have two equally awful choices. You had five. Now quit your crying and enjoy some real fish and chips you whiner. Do they still serve fish and chips on old newspapers as was proper over in cry baby country? Just curios.
If you think the two American choices are “equally awful”, you’re very much not paying attention.
I’ll let John Oliver explain:
https://youtu.be/gYwqpx6lp_s
If you rely on a comedian to provide your political analysis, then perhaps you are the one who has not been paying attention.
Funny how uncritical acceptance of mainstream media narratives went from the darkest sins possible on the left in the Bush years, to one of it’s most unquestionable principles today. Somewhere, Noam Chomsky is quietly weeping.
You’re assuming this was received uncritically. Project 2025 is out there for anyone to read, and if a comedian does a public service by making its existence known to those of us who are not nutjob right wingers trying to destroy the whole system of democracy in this country, then I say good for him.
Lol, project 2025 is just a website from Feb 2023 with a collection of stuff the heritage foundation has been saying for the past decade, it was brought to the attention of the the usual idiots (AP/Politico/Atlantic, etc) who did their usual handwringing about it last August-October. Very few people gave a shit, because it wasn’t packaged into campaign messaging and “conservative group wants to do conservative things,” is not actually a very compelling article on it’s own. But now suddenly a year later every major left wing media outlet has decided (based on the justification all of those articles include “it was trending on Tik Tok” lol) it deserves a second Minute of Hate, all coincidentally at the same time. Definitely no coordination involved there, no siree Bob, we’re not just propaganda arms.
Incidentally- did you ever consider that Project 2025 being “out there for anyone to read” represents a significantly greater degree of transparency than virtually any other government “reform” projects?
I don’t worry about nutjob right wingers. I worry about useful idiots.
“At least y’all got 5 candidates to choose from”
Please note that U.K. General Elections are not like US Presidential Elections.
Your ballot paper will say Joe Biden / Donald Trump, but our ballot paper does not say Rishi Sunak / Kier Starmer.
We don’t vote to choose our Prime Minister.
We vote to choose our own MP, to represent our own constituency. And there are 650 of those around the country.
If one political party gets an overall majority of 326 or more (650/2, +1) then that party becomes the party in power. And the leader of that party is Prime Minister.
But we don’t vote to choose our Prime Minister in the same way that you vote to choose your President
and we don’t get to choose our local rep in the US, unless we can afford to live where we agree with the rep in office. something like 90% of the seats in the house (and also the state houses in many cases) are locked in by politically-drawn district lines. i think it’s been 25 years since i cast a vote in a congressional race or state rep race that was actually in play. i get it there are downsides to each form of semi-democracy, but when bad actors intentionally turn bugs into features, it really makes one realize how easy it would be to break the system permanently.
Gone as quickly as the Jeep corrosion story.
Yeah, what’s up with that? Stellantis putting pressure on Galpin?
That’s what I’d like to know.
When a site is owned by a dealer network, it makes sense a good chunk of the articles will be thinly disguised ads mixed with fluff. The Jeep rust article was a really bad idea for them to run. Editors must have been hung over from July 4th to let that through.
I wouldn’t be all that suspicious. We don’t have any real reason to suspect that’s why it was pulled. More likely the reason’s akin to David’s established pop culture blind spot – he had an editorial objection because he couldn’t imagine why anyone would have any kind of problem with rusting Jeeps.
Bullshit. They’ve got zero problems writing numerous articles on Cybertruck rust spots (which is valid). The Jeep corrosion issue is equally valid as well. Both should stay. How David and Jason haven’t responded to this is mind boggling. What gives?
If I’m not mistaken, there are comments regarding this beginning here, including one where there’s an unofficial statement that the post was released before the end of Jeep’s response window (note that Lewin wrote this while hanging upside down and therefore not acutely aware that this was effectively a four-day weekend) and one.from Mercedes where she states the post was released prematurely. Allowing the subject of an article to respond to questions within a reasonable amount of time is good journalistic practice, and waiting until today to publish is a reasonable window.
I think this is the most like answer, especially if Galpin has any Jeep dealerships. Many of the affected owners are saying dealerships either refused to do the work or did it so poorly that the corrosion came back. Normally dealerships are happy to take on warranty work because they know they’ll get paid. It makes me think some of the dealerships are worried about getting swamped due to the large number of repairs needed or that they don’t want to deal with angry customers after a failed repair.
Regardless of the reasoning pulling the story is a bad look for The Autopian. Not offering any kind of explanation makes it that much worse.
This piece seems to still be here, but while it shows up as a search result using the string
jeep corrosion issues site:theautopian.com, the URLhttps://www.theautopian.com/owners-are-furious-about-the-jeep-jl-wranglers-corrosion-issues/loads a 404-like page.Not even the Wayback Machine archived this one…
They seem to have gotten it!
https://web.archive.org/web/20240705201106/https://www.theautopian.com/owners-are-furious-about-the-jeep-jl-wranglers-corrosion-issues/
Thanks!
Thanks!!
That was an interesting, well written article. All claims in it seem to have been well supported, including from an actual a Stellanis TSB, and quotes and claims from owners.
I still wish staff would comment on the retraction.
https://web.archive.org/web/20240705201106/https://www.theautopian.com/owners-are-furious-about-the-jeep-jl-wranglers-corrosion-issues/
Did you get to read it? What was in the details?
Newer Wranglers around 5 years old or under (I don’t know the generation designations and don’t care to look it up) seem to have a serious problem with aluminum corrosion and people are having very mixed results with trying to get remedied through dealers with the problem often returning in months to a year for those who get warranty approved. Some get denied outright, others seem to get the runaround long enough to push them over the out-of-warranty line. Stellantis seems to be treating it as a galvanic corrosion issue with the steel hinge parts on aluminum doors, but the corrosion is also fairly widely reported on areas, like the hood that don’t appear to have mixed metals interacting, pointing to a paint prep issue or some other internal manufacturing problem that introduces ferrous metal onto the aluminum prior to paint. A reported OEM fix is to instal a zinc washer or similar on the door hinges as sacrificial anodes (that will apparently then be on the customer to monitor and replace) to kick the can down the road and out of the warranty period. To me, it’s just another Jeep thing that I will never understand.
I wonder if Tesla benchmarked the Wrangler for the CT, but someone misinterpreted the memo from Musk written in shaky ketamine hand and, instead of trying to match or beat off road capability, they went with number of quality issues instead. So far, they’ve hit a grand slam, but Jeep’s not giving up so easily!
You write that like Ket is a bad thing…
It was a rare piece of investigative journalism by automotive journalists. I haven’t seen anything like it since Robert Farago publicly exposed Porsche’s intermediate shaft (IMS) failures nearly 20 years ago.
Cerberus has offered an excellent summary.
I’m sad I missed it
Who wrote it?
“Dead Elvis Inc.” found it in archive:
https://web.archive.org/web/20240705201106/https://www.theautopian.com/owners-are-furious-about-the-jeep-jl-wranglers-corrosion-issues/
DT woke up to a bloody YJ head in his bed.
Can we get a comment from Autopian staff on this one?
Did a story get posted then retracted? Why?
What’s interesting is that no articles have been posted since this one. Yes it’s the weekend but is something going on I wonder?
Thank you! I thought I had hallucinated reading that.
Smacks of toxic herbs, that sort of thing.
The chances that Renault UK has actually been involved in this at any approved level are slim to nil.
It might have Renault UK’s signature by some overjoyed office drone or soon to be ex-ad agency they are in business with – whichever it is, they should enjoy it while it lasts 🙂
I’m getting the popcorn ready as we speak in anticipation of the tons of watery excuses that will inevitably come.
No company has anything to gain from such a shot. They wouldn’t take such a risk even if it was insanely funny, which, to be honest, it is not.
Not to mention that even if Renault UK is all hell bent officially supporting it, it won’t go fine at the mothership in France by any means.
Wrong, I’m afraid. Definitely official by Renault UK. The “removals man” in some of the pics is familiar to the UK motor industry..
This sort of gag isn’t new. Department store chain John Lewis, DIY store Wickes, and others have all done similar “liveries on vans” poking fun at the Prime Minister at the time.
Its not 10 Downing Street though, its another street nearby which is superficially similar.
Nah, everyone’s happy that the Conservatives ate shit. Including France, since the Tories were pretty antagonistic to the EU.
Plus France and England traditionally hate each other, no way that the French will pass up an opportunity to poke fun at them.
And why not? Even the English, impersonating the French will poke fun at the English.
One of my pasports is French, I identify as such, and I can guarantee you that there is no way that Renault France Mothership would touch this with a ten foot pole.
This is simply not the type of humour we are into, nor would Renault FR have anything to gain from such an ad. Nor would Renault UK wait for the green light from Renault FR for this.
My comments are all about Renault UK, and I have stated them above.
My belief in this not having been officially sanctioned, OR has been sanctioned by someone who let personal preferences get in, and will soon see this thing coming back to bite them, is at least in part based on the thought that this is a very binary ad with a very clear “love it” / “hate it” end result, and the “hate it” part is not negligible.
More so because anyone that would have voted for the losing side would take that ad as moking them personally, not the ex-government (about which I honestly don’t give a flying fig 🙂 ).
It’s just too much risk for too temporary a gratification. Doesn’t make any sense for any professionally run business to take that route.
Unless they have a dead on balls accurate analysis of the political orientation of the potential users of said moving service, which I honestly don’t buy (and which is not detached enough from the mai brand to erase the issues above).
I’m starting to doubt the veracity of this as well. The only four (three came up on Google; one other through the attribution line for the photos MSN ran) UK-based websites running with this (I’m not providing links to them for reasons that should be clear after you read the text below) are:
Of course this is unlikely to be some Putin-directed dig at Rishi Sunak, but if this isn’t true, it illustrates how these items get disseminated so broadly so fast. Anyone who doesn’t trust the mainstream media really needs to dig into the media they are consuming.
[Meh, I can’t post a screenshot of the Renault UK press release of this story, that’s on a website that requires a login you won’t qualify to have.]
The van should have been driven by John Cleese in a suit of medieval armor. Saying, “now go away or I shall taunt you a second time!” ?
Carlos Ghosn could have used this on his last move.
Disguised as band’s van?
For extra funny Renault was owned by the French government for many years so there is a bit of nationalism here although I’m certain this stunt/diss was created by their UK ad agency
The French baiting the English is a centuries old tradition. Why stop now?
There could not be anything more french than this.
Although their politics doesn’t look much better.
You got that right. Hopefully tomorrow we’ll still be in a democracy.
So so Renault was baiting him with a master were they?
Maybe Tesla not advertising is a good thing.
It’s wild you can just park right in front of the Head of State’s front door. Could Renault park a moving truck with-in a quarter mile of the White House without expressed written permission of the Office of the President,NSA and NFL?
He’s not the head of state, and if you tried that at Buckingham Palace one of those guys in the funny hats would probably make your day kind of miserable.
If you’re old enough, the American equivalent would be Henry Kissinger I guess.
Actually thinking about it for more than two seconds the American equivalent would be the speaker of the house.
I don’t even know if there is an American equivalent. It’s such a dramatically different system.
The English system of Government is simple, just ask the Lord Privy Seal, who is not necessarily a Lord, neither are they a privy or, indeed a seal. As of ttoday the Lord Privy Seal is a Baroness. She was a chief whip. I hope this clarification is helpful.
Chief whip??? So the lead dominatrix of parliament?
Oddly enough, no. It is a party position, each party has a chief whip. Black Rod is not the same at all, she is The Lady Usher of the Black Rod, it is a position that is advertised, if one gets the job one becomes a Knight Bachelor (oddly this is not gender specific) in The Most Noble Order of the Garter. It is probably worth noting that while Black Rod can discipline the Lords Temporal, she, or he cannot interfere with the Lords Spiritual, the latter are Bishops and have their own ways.
That is fucking hilarious, my man. Cheers!
And just for the record, we have party whips in the US Senate as well to ensure party discipline – wait, weren’t we just going over this?
Chief whips, black rods, lady ushers, Garters, Bishops…
Just WTF is going on in there?!
S&M Chess, Parliament edition. But are the commoners allowed to play?
Commoner sex workers yes.
The Right Honorable Prime Minster is in fact de facto Head of State His Majesty’s Government. The position is the equivalent to the President, as it functions as the exclusive chief executive. The Crown is at the consent of Parliament since the crown took the L in the English Civil War and is long not functioned as actual head of state. However the crown does still hold command of the military. Kissinger at most was Home Secretary.
That’s actually 10 Adam Street in London.
The real 10 Downing Street doesn’t have that curved wall bit next to the door.
I’m pretty sure you couldn’t do this at the real 10 Downing Street, what with there being guards and a high metal gate controlling access to the street.
I thought the same, with the metal gates and everything I doubt it would be easy to do at 10 Downing Street.
Thanks for clarifying. Many years ago I stumbled across Downing Street while sightseeing and saw that access to the PM’s home was very restricted. I was wondering how Renault would have gotten permission and suspecting they picked a #10 on a different street.
Not restricted enough, as Liz Truss managed to get in and stay for six weeks.
Outlasted by an iceberg lettuce if I recall correctly.
We’ve been bamboozled! Rishi didn’t even stand outside in rain here!
I mean, he might have.
It’s a good substitution, because at first glance it looks very much like Downing Street. It’s not until you look closer and notice the curved front, the lack of rozzers etc.
You actually can’t without being very carefully checked. Downing St. is gated at the ends, with armed police guarding said gates.
The street is actually a dead end with some landscaping, only one way in or out.
You can’t. That’s not 10 Downing Street. The build8ng is superficially similar, but:
This building is rounded, not flat-fronted.
The door number is the wrong font and colour
There’s no decorative arch in front of the door.
It threw me for a moment, cos I’ve definitely seen it used as no. 10 in quite a few TV shows over the years.
I guess Brexit wasn’t as good of a bet as the Conservatives thought it was.
Although Farage, who is the all-time Brexit champion, actually did make it into the Parliament.
Kinda ironic he finally managed this in a Labour landslide election, after failing in multiple Tory-won contests.
I wonder if he’ll even show up. He rarely did any work as an MEP. But billed lots of expenses.
They didn’t think it was a good bet, they thought that they’d lose the Brexit vote and be able to blame everything on the UK electorate voting to stay in. No one seriously thought the public would be stupid enough to vote for it. Hence the comedy Leave campaign of obvious lies and the Remain campaign of not taking it seriously.
Reckless incompetence that fucked a country.
Yeah but if you don’t keep out the Polish plumbers, they would settle in, get married, and have offspring that become criminal masterminds.
(stars for those who get the reference)
I knew Blofeld was Polish, but not that his father was an immigrant plumber.
That really might be a BoJo gaff. Would fit well on Big Fat Quiz.