In 2013, the diamond brand is still thinking about the direction its future high-end will take. At this time, the fourth generation Renault Espace still in the catalog is 11 years old. Its survival is not assured, some on the management committee think that the minivan formula has had its day and that we should no longer continue down this path.
It is in this logic sparing the goat and the cabbage, that the fifth version which will appear in 2015 will timidly eye, but will still eye the SUV side. Alongside Espace V, a project known internally under the DFB code based on the CMF technical platform is keeping Laurens van den Acker’s teams busy. A project which without the work of losange magazine will still, to this day, have remained in the shadows.
When Renault wanted its “Evoque”
The images speak for themselves, this vehicle which broadly takes up the bow of the “future” Renault Espace 5 is very clearly distinguished in profile by a silhouette of a three-door SUV coupe in line with that of the of the Range Rover Evoque. For the record, the British firm had clearly marked its territory and declared its intentions in this area through the concept car Range Rover LRX exhibited in January 2008 at the Detroit Motor Show then in March of the same year at the Geneva Motor Show. While the modeling of the autoclave-type tailgate may refer to that of the first generation Audi Q3 and Q7 SUVs, and also anticipating that of the DS7 Crossback.
The underlying idea at Renault was above all to offer an exclusive silhouette to customers of the Mégane Coupé which was not carried over to the fourth generation. In the same way that Mini tried it with its SUV Coupé Mini Paceman whose career was not crowned with success.
In the diamond brand’s product plan, the standard “DFB” was to join the range by 2018. But in the meantime, the public’s disaffection for three-door bodies has taken its toll. Judging the potential of the car to be more than limited, Renault did not give the green light for its industrialization. The design director for the C segment in the range at the time, Agneta Dahlgren, mentions that a 5-door variant was once considered, but ultimately too close in size and performance to the Mégane, also 5 doors. , it was decided not to duplicate at this level of the range. While in the C segment, that of compact sedans then the most contested in Europe, three-seater sedans slowly but surely began to disappear.
The “big brother” that the Mégane never had…
If the redundancy strategy is very often adopted by premium brands which can afford it, it is on the other hand banned among generalists who monitor their budgets very closely. But as the saying goes, nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed, in a certain way, the genes of this project found themselves more or less diluted in the dress of the Mégane E-Tech. Presented in fall 2021 then marketed in spring 2022, it was no longer really a sedan and not yet an SUV but it still took care to hide its rear doors in its quarter panels like a coupe.
Source: Losange Magazine
