Renault is hoping for great things from its latest niche filler, the weird and wacky 'Avantime'. Could it really steal sales from BMW? Brian Laban is unconvinced.

According to Renault, Avantime, which started life as a styling concept in 1999, is aimed at 'customers with more open and nonconformist attitudes, responsive to the brand's inherent values of innovation and daring…' it is also, Renault say, aimed at forward-looking owners of top-range monospace models or estate cars, coupés (like Peugeot 406 coupé, Volvo C70), top-of-the -range SUV's (like Jeep Grand Cherokee, Mercedes ML, and BMW X5), and cabriolets (like BMW 3 Series, or Saab 9-3). In other words, across the BMW board.
So, what kind of car do Renault reckon can appeal to both a 3 Series cabrio owner an X5 owner? Well, it's an MPV -sized
vehicle that thinks it's a coupé, with hints of cabrio, and very distinctive looks. But is it really new, or just an old concept in a sharp suit?
Put it this way. Avantime is based on an Espace platform, and almost exactly Espace sized. But Avantime only has two doors and four (or an occasional five) seats, which is most un-Espace. The doors, admittedly, are huge, and cleverly suspended on dual-action hinges, so you don't have to have four-feet of clearance to open them. They do offer good access to both front and rear, but they're heavy and they don't have a very nice shut sound. And an even bigger catch comes when you climb through them, especially into the back.
The Avantime is no masterpiece of packaging. The front is fine, and the big seats are good looking, beautifully trimmed (as is the whole interior) and very comfortable. The rear seats would be comfortable too, it they were somewhere else. In the back, the Avantime is cramped. The floor is too high and the seats low, so sit you with knees-up with only average leg room, and no room whatsoever under the front seats for your feet. It feels awkward, and although the view forward is fine, if you try to look behind, the pillars are so big and the roofline so low it is like trying to look out through a letterbox. And unless you've got unfeasibly long arms, don't stay in the back on your own - it's a hell of a stretch to the front door handles.
This is, unfortunately, symptomatic of the Avantime's practical design; it isn't terribly practical. In some ways, it still feels like a concept car rather than a production car in which time has been spent resolving the details. Sat-nav is an exec-market must, for instance, but its controls are obscured by the otherwise neat lid that covers them and the CD slot. The door pockets are badly compromised by the proximity of the front seats (which cleverly include integral belt mounts), and the handbrake is buried in the sliding centre armrest-cum-storage bin. The heater controls on their own panel by the driver's door are a neat touch - so long as the passenger never wants to use them. And a domestic-style remote for the audio controls, for which you have to dig in the glove box, point and squirt, seems very fiddly from the people who do such a good steering wheel control set-up. So the interior looks terrific, but it isn't as user-friendly as it should be.
Then there's the packaging. Keep thinking Espace size, then think four to five seats, and in the back, snug ones at that. Look forwards: it's two days walk to the bottom of the windscreen (past the irritating digital dash) and most of it doing nothing. The boot space is compromised too. It's big, and has a clever rear shelf which can create a second flat floor, with a secure space underneath. The seats fold to make even more space, but then they spoil it all by building a very high rear lip - presumably to distance Avantime (a coupé, or a cabrio or a limo or whatever remember) from an MPV.
And dynamically? Well, mainly Espace, but in at least one area, not as well sorted. The Avantime's ride just isn't right. To give it reasonable taught handling and decent roll control(which it does have, in addition to excellent steering and brakes) they have lost almost all suppleness and bump absorption - whether on big swells, or short, sharp chops. It never feels soft enough or firm enough in the damping, so although it feels rock solid, it bounces and pitches almost continually.
Performance is okay. The 210bhp three-litre V6 with six-speed manual gearbox (which will come first) claims a maximum of 138mph and 0-62 mph in 8.6 seconds, and it's reasonably refined. But the optional auto would suit the 'limo' image better - and you won't be able to have an auto with the 165bhp two-litre four pot turbo.
But that isn't important. By attacking everything, the Avantime hasn't, for me, really hit anything. Especially nothing from BMW.