The Renault Avantime is a

grand tourer A grand tourer (GT) is a type of car that is designed for high speed and long-distance driving, due to a combination of performance and luxury attributes. The most common format is a Front-engine, rear-wheel-drive layout, front-engine, rear-wh ...

marketed by the French manufacturer

Renault Groupe Renault ( , , , also known as the Renault Group in English; legally Renault S.A.) is a French multinational automobile manufacturer established in 1899. The company produces a range of cars and vans, and in the past has manufacture ...

, designed and manufactured by

Matra Matra (an acronym for Mécanique Aviation Traction) was a French industrial conglomerate. During its years of operation, it was engaged in a wide range of business activities, primarily focused around automobiles, bicycles, aeronautics and w ...

, between 2001 and 2003. As a one-box design without B-pillars, styled by

Patrick Le Quément Patrick may refer to: * Patrick (given name), list of people and fictional characters with this name * Patrick (surname), list of people with this name People * Saint Patrick (c. 385–c. 461), Christian saint *Gilla Pátraic (died 1084), Patrick ...

, the Avantime combined the design elements of an MPV, estate or

shooting brake Shooting brake (sometimes mis-identified as "shooting break") is a car body style which originated in the 1890s as a horse-drawn wagon used to transport shooting parties with their equipment and game. The first automotive shooting brakes were ...

with the style of a 2+2 coupé and elements of a

convertible A convertible or cabriolet () is a passenger car that can be driven with or without a roof in place. The methods of retracting and storing the roof vary among eras and manufacturers. A convertible car's design allows an open-air driving expe ...

. The name "Avantime" is a

portmanteau A portmanteau word, or portmanteau (, ) is a blend of wordsFrench word "Avant" (meaning "ahead") and the

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word "time" – with the latter using the English /taɪm/ rather than French pronunciation /tiːm/.

Conception and design

The Avantime was designed and developed in-house by

affiliate

and was conceived by Philippe Guédon, head of the automotive division at Matra, who "believed that the children of

Espace Espace may refer to: * ESPACE, a complexity class in computational complexity theory * Espace musique, a Canadian radio service * Espace 2, a Swiss radio station * Radio Espace, a French radio station *Espace Group, a French media company *Group Es ...

owners remained loyal to the car even after they had grown up and left home. As a result, the renowned estate was gaining a generation of new drivers." Styled by

, the Avantime was intended to combine the space of an estate with the four place pillarless qualities of a coupé. Regarding the styling, Thierry Metroz, design project manager, said, "We wanted someone walking around the car to be continually astonished." Anthony Grade, Renault's vice-president of design said, "The exterior and interior had to be coherent. Using the Espace as a base, for instance, meant we had the central instrument display, but that‘s part of the innovative character of the whole vehicle". ''Car'' magazine described the interior as architectural and luxurious. The one-box design eliminated B-pillars and featured an aluminium structure, aluminium panels for the greenhouse and a full sunroof of strengthened heat-reflecting glass. The interior featured four seats, each with built in seatbelts, and leather from

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. To facilitate access to the rear seats, two long doors featured a double parallel opening hinge system (marketed as "double kinematic") that maximized access and minimized the door outswing. Front side windows lowered automatically when either of the front seats folded forward to further facilitate entry to the rear two seats. Windows featured power deployable sunshades, and the

H-point The H-point (or hip-point) is the theoretical, relative location of an occupant's hip: specifically the pivot point between the torso and upper leg portions of the body — as used in vehicle design, automotive design and vehicle regulation ...

s of the rear two seats were higher than the forward two seats, giving the Avantime "theater seating." The luggage compartment featured a retaining system using retractable straps, and all Avantimes featured a two-tone look created by the exposed aluminium of the greenhouse. The windows and panoramic sunroof could open automatically via a single headliner-mounted control, to give the Avantime an 'open air' mode of previous decades hardtop coupes and sedans. The design borrowed the automotive space frame of the first generation Renault Espace (load bearing galvanized structure with non-load bearing composite panels) and used the PSA 24 valve, 207 hp (152 kW) 3.0L V6 engine, which was coupled to a six-speed manual transmission or five-speed automatic transmission. A facelift for the Avantime codenamed D67 was planned for 2004-2005 that would have seen the boot lip lowered.

Launch and reception

The Avantime was first shown in February 1999, in concept form at a press launch in the

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, and one month later to the public at the

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– where it was referred to as a "Coupéspace" – and went into production two years later, after the subsequent engineering of the pillarless roof to meet safety standards. The Avantime's sales were poor. The car's fortunes were not helped by the introduction of the

Renault Vel Satis The Renault Vel Satis is an executive car that was produced by the French manufacturer Renault, launched at the 2001 Geneva Motor Show to replace the already discontinued Safrane. It was previously revealed as a concept car in 1998, at the Paris ...

(another large, upmarket Renault) around the same time. When Matra decided to pull out of the automotive production business in 2003 (partly as a result of the financial loss incurred by the poor sales of the Avantime), Renault chose to discontinue the Avantime rather than move its production elsewhere. 8,557 were built from 2001 to 2003, a figure that makes it one of the worst-selling cars of all time. In 2002, ''

Automobile Magazine ''Automobile'' was an American automobile magazine published by the Motor Trend Group. A group of former employees of ''Car and Driver'' led by David E. Davis founded ''Automobile'' in 1986 with support from Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, u ...

'' said "Le Quement is clearly an outside the box thinker, and the product of his vision is a fascinating exercise, but American buyers' utilitarian expectations of the one box shape just don't jibe with the decadence and frivolity of a grand touring coupe." In November 2008, the Avantime was featured on the British motoring show ''

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'', where the presenters modified the performance of a used Avantime, attempting to lap the test track faster than a

Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution X The Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution X is the tenth and final generation of the Lancer Evolution, a sports sedan produced by Japanese manufacturer Mitsubishi Motors. By September 2005, Mitsubishi introduced a concept version of the next-gen Evoluti ...

. The Avantime was one of the few cars that all three presenters,

Jeremy Clarkson Jeremy Charles Robert Clarkson (born 11 April 1960) is an English broadcaster, journalist, game show host and writer who specialises in motoring. He is best known for the motoring programmes '' Top Gear'' and '' The Grand Tour'' alongside R ...

, Richard Hammond and

James May James Daniel May (born 16 January 1963) is an English television presenter and journalist. He is best known as a co-presenter of the motoring programme '' Top Gear'' alongside Jeremy Clarkson and Richard Hammond from 2003 until 2015. He also ...

liked, along with the

Ford Mondeo The Ford Mondeo is a large family car manufactured by Ford since 1993. The first Ford model declared as a " world car", the Mondeo was intended to consolidate several Ford model lines worldwide (the European Sierra, the Telstar in Asia and Aus ...

and

Subaru Legacy The is a mid-size car built by Japanese automobile manufacturer Subaru since 1989. The maker's flagship car, it is unique in its class for offering all-wheel drive as a standard feature, and Subaru's traditional boxer engine. The Legacy was sol ...

.Top Gear, Series 12 Episode 3. 16 November 2008 May would later drive a Renault Avantime for

The Grand Tour ''The Grand Tour'' is a British motoring television series, created by Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, James May and Andy Wilman, made for Amazon exclusively for its online streaming service Amazon Prime Video, and premiered on 18 November ...

's Carnage A Trois special.

European sales"Renault Avantime Europe Sales Figures" https://carsalesbase.com/europe-renault-avantime

References

{{Renault Avantime Cars introduced in 2001 Cars discontinued in 2003 Front-wheel-drive vehicles Grand tourers Station wagons Coupés