Metro's Review of the Year

Well, it's that time of year again - New Year's Eve Eve.  Time to reflect on what has been and gone in 2014.

A year when, thanks to this very post you are reading now, I have achieved exactly 5 Posts in each calendar month - not something I set out to do back in January but as it started to happen, I decided to make a point of continuing it.  Normal service will be resumed next year.

Talking of back in January, the BBC showed "Russia on Four Wheels"

Metro, the free newspaper, unlike Metro the me, didn't appreciate it so I wrote a post explaining why they were wrong.

The big motoring story in February was the giant sinkhole that took 8 cars at the National Corvette Museum in Kentucky, USA.  I covered it along with a few British sinkholes that seemed to be coincident with it.

In March, I foresaw the emergence of UKIP as a force to be dealt with in British politics - they went on to win 2 by-elections unfortunately.  Although really it was an excuse to discuss the mascinations occurring at the top of F1.

Looking at that car, I just have to reiterate what I said in March, "Ugh!"

In April, Chris Evans tried to initiate "National Take Your Classic Car to Work Day".  It didn't work.

May saw the end of the Hindustan Motors Company - producer of the Hindustan Ambassador for over 60 years.  A sad time.  End of an era.  So I made comments about Ferrero Rocher.

In June a Parliamentary Under-Secretary in the Department for Transport commented on the poor state of British roads.  It's a better story than it sounds.

Half way through the year already.  In the heat of the July sun, Jeremy Clarkson & James May crashed some Peugeots:

My story went on to discuss another crash a bit nearer to home.  MSN speculated that the Peugeots crash happened during filming of a new series of Top Gear and my response was "Well Duh!!"

Well I'm not so sure now because I haven't seen anything with those cars in.  Yet.

August saw the Bernie Ecclestone Bribery Trial reach its climax.  Or anti-climax.  He paid out a load of cash to make it go away.

Saturday September 13th 2014 will go down in history as the date of the first ever Formula e race.  It happened in Beijing and was everthing that had been hoped for including a dramatic crash at the end. I covered the event quite comprehensively by my standards.

This Katherine Legge, the only female, British driver.  She isn't very good.

October gets three stories - well, two stories in three posts.  October is when it all kicked off for the Top Gear team in Argentina.  Here's my take. I watched the shows this week and it looked very scary - not for the presenters because they were whisked away to safety quite early on - but for the crew - even the joke 2CV thing had its windows smashed - what was the point of doing that? (Apparently it is a Citroneta - here are some images)

I can see why they made the Butch Cassidy joke at the end of the show but it was a bit unnecessary and detracted from the danger their crew was in.

The Lotus was very impressive though.  Probably destroyed by now.

The other October story was the end of Luca di Montezemolo's chairmanship of Ferrari and his ousting by Sergio Marchionne.  Marchionne then went on to effectively sell Ferrari.  Details are here and here.

November.  Nearly at the end now.

November brought us SEMA (as it often does) and the news that Red Bull F1 Team boss Christian Horner got engaged to a Spice Girl and nobody noticed.

And then we reached December 2014.  This was when I decided to do a review of the year - don't think I'll include a link to that - might get recursive.  Instead I'll remind you that this month, Google uncovered a proper, working version of their stupid driverless car.

It actually makes the UKIP one look preferable.

Have a happy and prosperous 2015.  I'll be back in the New Year - maybe this Thursday (but probably not).