Well, it's taken long enough to get around to this hope it was worth the wait. There's a couple of pictures of the Avantime on the photo site : communities.msn.com/honestjohn
I was lucky enough to be upgraded from a Laguna II to an Avantime on my recent holiday to Corsica. Having spent a full week living with it, I think I'm in quite a good position to report on how it performs and how easy it is to live with.
First thing you notice about the Avantime is that you've never seen anything quite like it in your life. It's the size of an Espace but with two enormous doors, no B Pillar, a back end with a low bugling boot and enough designer touches to qualify it for its own Channel Four documentary. Suffice to say that no matter where you drove it, it turned heads and drew crowds. That's not to say it's the most beautiful car available today but it's certainly one of the most distinctive. Whenever I've been out in weird or fantastic machinery before, it was pretty much always blokes that would appear to check it out. The Avantime drew everybody from kids to bikers to coach loads of Grandmothers.
Once you're inside through the huge three part doors you're greeted with an equally impressive interior in full leather and I think pretty much stolen from the Espace. Everything is well laid out and easily to hand with steering wheel controls for the Cruise/Speed control and a remote lever thing for the radio, which I guess is Renault standard having seen the same controls in a white diesel Kangoo van.
The centrally placed information centre is digital and very clear. The only issue is with the rev counter that sits behind and is obscured by the steering wheel. The CD Radio is hidden behind a panel which at times was reluctant to open, but the umpteen speaker system was just fantastic playing the latest Moby CD.
Looking around from the driver?s seat, visibility was excellent - no B pillar means unobstructed views each side, the full length sunroof (with electric blinds for both front and rear passengers) gives a great view of the sky, but as with many cars these days the A Pillar hides some of the road ahead when on twisty roads. The front of the car drops sharply so you can't really see the front, and the rear is miles away and behind the rounded rear window and boot. You get used to it eventually but there might be a case for parking sensors, as with so many large cars. That said, I never had a problem parking it anywhere even in the tightest spaces. The electric & heated self folding wing mirrors helping a lot. The high sitting position of the car gives excellent views over hedges much like a 4x4 but without the horrible handling of a typical school run off-roader.
Getting comfortable was easy enough with adjustable seat/steering wheel and with the excellent visibility and overall space and the airy feel of the car, it felt truly luxurious place to be.
The engine was the 3.0 V6 24v, producing 210HP and delivered through a six speed box. If you wanted to drive the manual like an auto, put the Avantime in 3rd and it?d happily tootle around all day. Corsica is mountainous but the Avantime sailed up and down even the steepest slopes with ease. It comes as standard with ABS and ESP and enough torque to pull down a chimney so you never really have to think too hard about your driving style.
It seemed to just sort itself out no matter how hard you pushed it into a corner and the 235/50R17s just kept to the line you were pointing the steering wheel. The only quirk as that around town on sharp bends at about 30mph the ASP would kick in and you could feel the wheel on the inside of the corner being braked. This wasn't at speeds or
angles that I would have thought would cause understeer.
There were only a couple of niggles with the car - to get into the rear seats you need to release the front seats. On this example, the driver?s seat reverted to dwarf mode whereas the passenger seat resumed to where you'd set it. Probably due to this being an abused hire car. The handbrake could easily awkward to use as the sliding central armrest when pushed forward was above. And the excellent one button that opens all the windows, the sunroof and blinds with one action could result in some very windswept passengers at high speed, but the feeling of openness I don't think could be matched this side of a convertible.
Accommodation is excellent, everyone gets acres of leg/head/arm room and there are cubby holes and drinks holders everywhere. The boot is enormous, swallowing three 75l rucksacks and several day bags easily along with the traditional supermarket fayre of water and snacks. It's got a bar along the lines of the C3 to split into two, but as with the C3 I thought this was pointless.
I really liked the climate control setting, where the driver and passenger had their own settings, controlled by a small console with just + & - and a display of the selected temperature. Again, I think this is from the Espace but shows very clear thinking and exceptional ease of use. Jacob Nielsen* would approve.
So, how does the Avantime stack up against the competition? Well in terms of luxury I reckon it's up there with the Germans. In terms of engineering I think the Audis, BMWs and Mercedes of the world will always be very hard to surpass and Renault have realised this and so have attacked them on a style front and came up with a whole new type of car, the Designer Monobox Coupe Sports Greenhouse. I think they've got it right.
The Avantime is well screwed together and a pleasure to live with, but then so are all the competition. Driving the Avantime you feel special because the car is special. Renault took the rule book for expensive cars and shredded it. Yes, your A6 may be very nice but no-one can tell it apart from the A4 or the A8. The BMW5 may be the best car in the class but it looks just like every other 3 box car BMW have built. And when you sit in either the look, feel and space you're offered is much the same as car manufacturers have offered you for the past 30 years.
Renault have taken a brave and probably necessary with the Avantime and in a way it'd be a shame if it worked. The Avantime is unusual and that's what makes it special. If suddenly the whole world drove cars that looked like the Avantime it'd lose it's edge. When you examine history, Renault have developed some of the most innovative cars of the last 20 years - the Espace led the way for people carriers and the Scenic launched a million Almera Tinos. I hope they can lead luxury cars away from the 70's American police car three box format with the Avantime.
Overall I absolutely loved the car and given the spare cash would buy one without hesitation. I may be in luck too, as most large French cars seem to suffer terrible depreciation, so perhaps in three or four year?s time I could pick one up for a fraction of the cost of an autobahn cruiser, and that's probably Renault's biggest problem.
Lee
*Nielsen is an expert in Usability : www.useit.com/
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