Terrible cars I have owned - Citroen BX now with Avantime

[cort16]

I wrote this to do as a podcast. I even got as far as recording this and one about the Renault Avantime and spent a shit load of time recording and editing and what not only to find when played back on a phone the sound quality sounded like I was inside a cardboard box. Try as I might I couldn't fix it and ended up with a major mojo bypass

I thought what I wrote may be of some interest on here (or not). Also may contain factual inaccuracies. It written as if I'd be reading it out so keep that in mind.

Part 1:

When I was 19 my Dad bought a new car and probably rightly didn’t want me driving it so handed me down the keys to the old family car.  This was a 1980 Cortina that was red with a red interior and had already been part of the family for 7 years. I loved that car. It took me on adventures all over the country, acted as tour bus when I was in a band and gave me the freedom only a car can offer.

After a few year it did what old fords do and rusted to the point it wasn't going to get through any more MOT’s.  This is probably the only car I’ve ever been sentimental about. I could  never bring myself to sell it so I  hid it in in a garage.  Eventually the owner of the garage wanted the space back and I had to reluctantly take it to the scrap yard.

Once the Cortina was out of the pictures I went off the rails big time and started changing my cars every few months,  which escalated to every few weeks and at some points every few days.  I’ve owned 100’s of cars. Currently I own 4(3), which by normal peoples standards is a number, which indicates some kind of mental illness.

One of these is cars  an Austin Allegro , one is a BMW Z4 and unsurprisingly one is a Ford Cortina.   I don’t have a lot of consistency.

A lot of these cars have been terrible, others have been interesting but all have a story to tell. So that’s what I thought I’d do on this podcast (post)

The first one is about the Citroen BX one of my first cars and my only ever Citroen.

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In 1982 Citroen launched the BX, a car to replace it’s ageing GS model, which had been in production since the early 1970’s.   The GS ran small and not very powerful air cooled flat four engines. To design a vehicle ready for the 1980’s Citroen went to Bertone WHO made a nice job of THE BX given it was basically cobbled together out of bits of previous Reliant an Volvo concept cars.  They also switched from air cooled to water cooled engines ranging from a barely believable  1.1 litres up to 1.9 litres in the main stream models.  They also helped usher in the change, which made turbo diesels engines not only popular but desirable thanks to the economy and performance of this new generation of engines.

Of course None of this mattered 15 years later as I travelled to Edinburgh one wet November evening in a friends 1988 Vauxhall Astra that had the structural integrity of slice of puff pastry.  My current car (A Volvo 360), which has been purchased for 100 pounds had developed a chronic fuel habit and an even worse habit for breadowns.

I broke down so often on the way home from work in the same layby a friend who drove home daily in the opposite direction thought I was try to strike a relationship with the surly owner of the resident burger van. After putting up with this for way longer than any person should enough was enough and I managed to sell the Volvo. I increased my initial investment by 20% by selling it for 120 pounds I also procured a bank loan for £500  to top up my budget, the start of a chain of extensive spending on old heaps, which still doesn't seem to have finished. There was of course no internet, or at least no internet I had access to so I went to the shop and bought the bible of ill advised purchases. The yellow paper.  

I’ve a feeling the yellow paper will be making a few appearances in this pod cast having been the gateway to a few really terrible cars.. For those who don’t remember the yellow paper it’s like an analogue gumtree.  By which I mean a big list of crap people are trying t to sell off.  From BMW’s to baseball bats from, foul mouthed budgies to farm animals.

More relevant to this story is they had a cars for less than £500 section.  I  took a comfortable seat, mopped my brow and clutching a biro with a feverish hand and after using up all other additional cliches I started to pour through the adverts. I had no idea what I wanted. Well other than no more Volvo’s.

As I worked my way down the list I spotted it. A 1984 Citroen BX GT with one years MOT and 6 months tax £450.  This was in the good old days when the car tax went with the car and all you needed to do was insure it .  I know car dealers Christmas night out drinks funds took a serious hit when they changed the rules as they used to cash in the tax discs of their part exchange cars as they came into stock. I persuaded my puffed pastry Astra driving pal to give me lift to Edinburgh to view to view the car.

After kicking the tyres for a few minutes The seller, worryingly  immediately accepted my low ball offer of £375 and cheerfully waved me on my way. 375 pounds down I set off for home in my 3rd ever car and first French car. I broke down almost immediately.

Not  only was it my first french car it was my first sinker,  a term attributed to the  hydrolastic fluid filled suspensions habit of sinking to the ground when the car is turned off or in my case broken down. I slowly coasted down a hill onto the hard shoulder losing altitude as I came to a stop. I opened the bonnet, and exercised the  time tested practice of anyone doesn’t know anything about cars and wiggled all the wires around. Amazingly I got back in it and it started up.

Not filled with confidence and having bought the car under budget I took it for a visit a my mechanic Tam who was an engineer in same company I worked for and worked on cars on the side and charged an unbelievable even for 1997 £5 an hour and was the main the reason someone as mechanically hopeless as me could run hopeless old heaps.  He got us out of so many scrapes  one of my house mates invited Tam to his wedding. Not only as he was a really nice guy but it’s good to have a bit of backup incase the wedding car breaks down.

Tam popped the bonnet on the Citroen and pointed at the carburetor and all the petrol that was leaking out of it onto the engine.  My heart sank somewhat less so because of fire ball I could have been ingulfed in in but more that the argument I’d just been having with someone that the car had the Peugeot 205 GTi engine in it was losing more water than the car was petrol.  The i in GTI of course meaning it was fuel injected and doesn’t have a carburettor. I wasn’t totally wrong the BX GT does have the same 1.9 petrol engine as 205Gti it just has a twin choke carburetor rather than fuel injection.  It still had 105bhp so felt pretty quickly especially after a Volvo 360 psychotic carburtor.

I can’t exactly remember what Tam did to fix it but it didn’t take much.  I handed over a fiver and was soon on my way pressing the BX into my grueling 1 miles a day commute.

It was quite an interesting car to live with it being a mk1 BX.  I think it’s fair to say when the mk2 BX came out it lost some of the charm of the original carl.

While they brought out some better engines and the GT became a GTi the interior went from something very interest and very french to being full of shiny black plastic like any other 90’s Peugeot or Ford. One of more interesting features of the early cars was the single spoke steering wheel, which was a nod to the single spoke wheels in the earlier GS and even earlier DS models.  The problem with this was it didn’t really leave a lot of room for indicator stalks.  the answer Citroen came up with was to put two large rocker switches on top of the dashboard. Non cancelling rocker switches of course so you can end up in a of semi permanent state of indicating left but. I think  ferrari may have only recently topped this for weirdness by putting indicator switches on the steering wheel.

It was weird but once you got past that it ws as a good car really, very comfy seats, room for five and very well equipped for a car built in 1984.  Around this time my girlfriend had just graduated from university and being the romantic type I promised a weekend in Scarborough a seaside town in the North East of england.  It’s probably worth mentioning at this point a few incident preceding this journey that if it weren’t for the innocence of youth may have put me off this journey.

In the subsequent months since buying my own BX my house mate, lets call him Drew because that’s his name so impressed by the electric windows in my BX went out and bought himself a BX GTi.  

 

Okay so his car had fuel injection and 120bhp to my poxy 105 but being the later model it had an interior with the personality of a toyota auris wheel nut. In short order after buying it He turned our street into a scene from the fillm there will be blood with the amount of oil on the ground.  He poured in 3 litres of oil into the car with no rise in dipstick level only to find the oil filler pipe was disconnected and he’d just be pouring it straight onto his shoes. After finally topping it up to a suitable level on the dipstick he called me the next day at work to inform mr his BX was smoking like a chimney and running like a two stroke lawnmower and smoking like the flying scotsman.  A quick comparison of dip sticks between our two cars showed his dip stick much smaller and  clearly out of a different car .  How embarrassing... for hi

After draining litres of oil from the sump the final act of this horror story was revealed yet again on the Edinburgh bypass  as his BX dumped all its hydraulic fluid out in one great big green snottery fart.  It’s final minutes on the road ended as while fully laden with  his family onboard it cruised off down a slip road with no brakes, steering or suspension towards a busy roundabout.  He some how manage to wrestle it into some bushes and stop it with only minor damage to his underwear.

With all this in fresh in our mind we threw our bags in the boot of my BX headed off on a 4 hr drive from Scotland to Scarborough.

 

 

 

 

 

[cort16]

There's a pt2 if anyone can be arsed?

[mrbenn]

Yes please!

[spartacus]

Yeah! This is great!

[Lacquer Peel]

Hydropneumatic (Citroën) not hydrolastic (BMC/BL).

A podcast along these lines is a great idea. Some of my favourite podcasts started with dreadful sound quality so I wouldn't let that put you off.

[cort16]

15 minutes ago, Lacquer Peel said:

Hydropneumatic (Citroën) not hydrolastic (BMC/BL).

A podcast along these lines is a great idea. Some of my favourite podcasts started with dreadful sound quality so I wouldn't let that put you off.

God damn it?

The problem is it’s too quiet. Also I re recorded parts of it I ballsed up and didn’t replicate my mic setup so it’s a mess. I may return to it one day tho

[MiniMort]

Good story. My grandad owned  a 1986 Citroen BX 17RD before I was born. I don't think he had any major issues with it but A) it was a diesel (something Peugeot Citroen was great at) and it was still pretty new. 

Anyway, I'm looking forward to part 2!

[louiepj]

Loved reading this and now awaiting part 2

[mrdelmonti]

Yeah definitely keep it going!

[Noel Tidybeard]

2 hours ago, cort16 said:

There's a pt2 if anyone can be arsed?

oh do get on with it we're waiting you know

[cort16]

Part 2 and the final part. Not quite as long. I have another one written for the Avantime too.

The journey down was fine.

We parked the car and found our hotel in Scarbourgh, which had the same charm as soviet prison camp.  None the less we enjoyed a couple of days there eating candifloss and dropping ¼ of a ton of 2 pences into the penny water falls. On the last day we decided to head back via Whitby, which is another sea side down on the North Yorkshire coast.

Whitby is famous for it’s Abbey, which was supposed be the the inspiration from bram stoker's Dracula .  Dracula and lucky ducks, which are a small glass duck you can buy in the town that cost a few pounds and are supposed to bring you luck.  I had bought a lucky duck from Whitby a few years previously and had such a run of bad luck I tied it to a stone and threw in a river so I was worried I was going to be in for some duck related bad Karma. I was. As I crossed the North Yorkshire moors towards Whitby the thing all BX owners dreaded happened.  The red stop light of doom started to flash on the dash board.  

While there are many upsides to the Hydraulic setup in the Citroens one of the downsides is the fluid drives everything.  Brakes, suspension and most worryingly the steering.

As the pressure in the system lowers the the system basically has hypothermia as there’s not enough fluid or pressure to reach all the systems that need it. This being pre-mobile phone days I didn’t want to get stuck on the moors and get eaten by a werewolf so I pressed on with reduced functions into Whitby.  

We parked up and called my vehicle recovery to assistance. I’ll not say who they are but they’re always 12 steps away if you know what I mean.  When the van arrived and he saw the car you could see his face sink further than the BX.   The reason for this is once the vehicle sinks to it’s resting position either because the engine is broken or all the fluid has escaped they’re difficult to recover as they have no ground clearance and limited suspension and steering.  As a result they need to be picked up by all four wheels and loaded onta a flatbed truck. He cheered up a bit when he realised I only had the basic package, which meant he only needed to offer local assistance and wouldn’t be getting involved in a 7 day marathon trying to get me and it back to Scotland.  He looked at it for about 2 minutes, shook his head and said he couldn’t fix it. For one he didn’t have any LHM in the van, which is the green hydraulic fluid these need and for seconds he wasn’t confident he could safely patch the pipe.  Some parts of the system run at high pressure so you can’t just fix it with some fuel hose as the hose might blow off and you’ll crash and die, which all in all would be too much paperwork for the recovery company. 

His advice was to find a local motor factors and buy all the LHM they had then attempt to drive home as the leak at this point wasn’t too bad.  So this is what I did. I stopped to check and top up every 30 miles or so and to be honest it didn't seem like it was using that much.   This was fine until i got to the Carter Bar, which is on the Border between Scotland and England.  The road is like a hair pin filled alpine pass but with more empty irnbru cans at the side of the road.

I didn’t top up at the fluid at the top, which was a mistake.  I thought I could probably get down without touching the brakes , which was also a mistake.  

We started heading down the hill, the first hair pin nearly put as off the road as I was carrying to much speed not trying to use the brakes. As I headed towards the 2nd hairpin I noticed a large articulated lorry not making a great job of trying to get around the hairpin. I was forced to apply the brakes to see the RED stop light pulsing on the dashboard as the steering began to weight up we made our way towards the lorry, which was now almost totally blocking the road. Luckily the brakes hadn’t yet got the memo the stop light was sending out  so the car slowed and the lorry had moved enough to negotiate our way around the corner. After stopping to top up with fluid and hyperventilate into a paper bag for a few minutes we headed for home without further drama.

Once home the bx was parked up outside the house with a chinese takeaway wrapper tied to the bottom to catch the leaking LHM. It went to Tam’s who fixed it for 5 pounds (probably using fuel hose) and gave me it back . By this time I’d bought a really, really terrible Nissan Silver S12 Turbo so the BX needed to go.

I sold the BX to a local guy who was commuting weekly from Scotland to London. He was sick of paying for hire cars so bought the BX and drove down to London, parked it somewhere near Heathrow then used it when he flew down there. That was the only green blooded Citroen I ever owned. I’m not in a huge rush to get another BX but I wouldn't say no to a Citroen C6.

Citroen sold over 2 million BX’s in it 12 year life cycle and sold in significantly higher number than the Xantia it preceded. The Xantia was still  green blooded as was the later Citroen C6. It made sense on the luxury C6 but started to make less sense for them on their main stream cars.  The last Citroen C5 only had it available on the flagship models the rest came out steel sprung as did the later DS models. .  

The complexity of the system scared fleet buyers and hurt residual values. By this time other luxury manufacturers has moved to wards a simpler air suspension setups for their premium vehicles.  It also added to the production costs and with manufacturers moving towards having shared platforms to save on development costs unfortunately there’s was no place for the system. That seems like a bit of a shame.

 

[Lacquer Peel]

After the Xantia, all HP Citroëns are orange blooded. I am so dull.

 

 

[Bucketeer]

2 hours ago, Lacquer Peel said:

Hydropneumatic (Citroën) not hydrolastic (BMC/BL).

Soz for adding another layer of pedantry but wasn't it oleopneumatic rather than hydropneumatic? 

 

Also, ace stuff Cort.

[Tadhg Tiogar]

2 minutes ago, Bucketeer said:

...oleopneumatic rather than hydropneumatic?

Yes, but legions of lazy journos have turned it into the latter.

[Bucketeer]

Oh and I'd love to hear/read about more of your horrors. The Panda would be a good one if you could bear to relive it, and I'm sure you could get hours of material out if your attempts to sort the headlights on your unsellable American barge.

[cort16]

1 minute ago, Bucketeer said:

Oh and I'd love to hear/read about more of your horrors. The Panda would be a good one if you could bear to relive it, and I'm sure you could get hours of material out if your attempts to sort the headlights on your unsellable American barge.

I need another 12-18 months of therapy before I can talk about the Panda.

[Tadhg Tiogar]

23 minutes ago, cort16 said:

..... . The complexity of the system ....

The irony is that it wasn't that complex.

[Sigmund Fraud]

7 minutes ago, Tadhg Tiogar said:

Yes, but legions of lazy journos have turned it into the latter.

I don't think we should blame the press for this one ; Citroen themselves marketed it as hydropneumatic :

[cort16]

4 minutes ago, Tadhg Tiogar said:

The irony is that it wasn't that complex.

Unfortunately with modern cars any thing different is seen as being too complex unless it's something expensive and performance related. The DS5 has a beam rear axle.

[Tadhg Tiogar]

1 minute ago, Sigmund Fraud said:

I don't think we should blame the press for this one ; Citroen themselves marketed it as hydropneumatic :

I'm really disappointed that my theory didn't hold water.

[Sigmund Fraud]

"Liked" because the forum software lacks the essential "I see what you did there" button ?

[Broadsword]

Yeah, I understand why you were put off a BX. For me it's really simple though with these green-blooded cars. Do not buy a cheap one. Shop around, pay over the odds for one that has been cherished and you will have no issues. I've done it both ways. The white Xantia I have I paid just over a grand for. Two MOTs no issues 14 000 miles, no problems and it's basically fine. For the trouble-free miles I got out of it, I say I got my money's worth even though the initial price was relatively high. Slightly annoyingly for me, no-one else sees things that way and it is proving to be the most difficult car to sell I've ever had. On the flipside, I bought a very cheap here and within a few weeks it was scrapped. Working on it was like pulling a loose thread on an old jumper. Didn't put me off, just told me not to try and buy a cheap one. Hydropnuematic Citroens up to the Xantia aren't complex at all. They just don't respond to extended periods of neglect, which let's face it happens often.

[nacho man]

Ace read that, knock some more up will ya.

[chodweaver]

Moar pleez. Would very much like to hear about the Avantime.

 

Some of my trials with a Vel Satis are documented on the beige pages, but it's first party trick within minutes of my picking it up, was to leak so much oil from the turbo return pipe onto the exhaust manifold that I had to choose between choking to death on the smoke pulled in through the demister vents, or have the hvac switched off altogether and, through zero visibility, crash into something in one of Wakefield's signature rainstorms. Mrs CW, who had given me a lift to buy this French catastrophe, sought refuge in her own properly functioning car and googled 'solicitors specialising in divorce'.

Amazingly, I resisted the temptation to kill the Vel Satis with fire, as indeed have several of this parish who have been its subsequent owners.

 

Sent from my BV6000 using Tapatalk

 

 

 

 

[dollywobbler]

I've owned many a BX. Only had one catastrophic hydraulic failure, and that was on a BX with over 300,000 miles on it. Still managed to drive it a couple of miles to qualify for breakdown cover as I didn't have home recovery. May have left a green trail through the village...

I'm glad I owned many a BX while they were cheap. They're great dailies once you suss them out. Couldn't own one today though. They're getting a bit too fragile, a bit too valuable and rot has killed off rather too many of them.

[chaseracer]

The two I had were great - but that was a long, long time ago.

[Uncle Jimmy]

Started me off thinking about DSs and my lust for them,  carry on!

[cort16]

I did enjoy owning it (more so in retrospect) and it was a Toyota Corolla in terms of issues in comparison to what I replaced it with.

[cort16]

Here' s the one I did on the Avantime. This is more about the car itself as during my ownership it behaved near enough perfectly.

I loved that Renault built these. I suspect platform sharing and Alliances that mean there are probably only about 4 true car makers left in the world has put a stop to odd balls like this.

Hopefully the flexibility of the up coming electrical platforms can bring back some madness. I fancy a 2019 all electric Espace coupe.

Avantime:

Having failed to sell many cars in the executive segment outside of France Renault teamed up with Matra to produce the Avantime. Effectively being designed and built by Matra but marketed by Renault the Avantime was born from Matra’s head of designs belief that customers loyal to the Matra built Renault Espace, couldn’t get anything with the same design principles as the espace once their kids had grown up and they no longer required an MPV.

In 2 years the concept was translated into what is essentially a sharp looking 3 door Renault Espace MPV, with funny doors and a premium a price tags.

Of course none of this mattered as I stood outside a Glasgow bus station on a wet September afternoon clutching an envelope full of cash waiting to be picked up by a policeman driving a car previously owned by John Barrowman from Doctor Who.

I was looking for a new car after coming out of an abusive 4 month relationship with  5 series BMW. In a misguided attempt to save money due to the imminent arrival of a baby I’d returned my leased car and bought a 10 year old BMW. After 4 months of dealing with oil leaks, horrible fuel consumption, random electrical fault and it almost permanently being in the garage trying to get fixed I sold it for a crushing loss and was suddenly in the market for something as un BMW as possible. Nothing is as un BMW as much as a Renault Avantime. I’d always liked them but previously they’d alway been too expensive to have as a second car but even after selling the BMW at a loss I still just about enough to find a half decent one.

In the UK the Avantime only came with a  2 litre four cylinder 16 valve turbo engine, which had 165bhp and a 3 litre v6 petrol that produced around 210 bhp. I’m guessing the Avantime didn’t get the Nissan 3.5 litre v6 that went into other Renault models because of the base platform, which was the older mark 3 Renault espace. The rest of Europe got a turbo diesel Avantime later on but this didn’t come to the UK. 

They only sold  500 or so Avantimes in the UK so I thought my chances of finding one was pretty slim. I went onto gumtree and found a 2.0 turbo for sale, 30 miles away with a fresh cambelt change right in my price range. I turned up and found a house who’s whole front garden was stuffed with Avantimes. The owner was a Policeman who had a love for Avantimes. Having recently bought John Barrymans fully loaded v6 he was was now looking to sell his old car.

The designers of the Avantime said “We wanted someone walking around the car to be continually astonished”. As soon as I opened the door I was sold.  The double parallel hinge on the door makes it possible open the huge doors in tight spaces and was like nothing I’d seen before. Once I’d pressed the button that made all the windows open and the huge glass roof slide back I was practically throwing ten pound notes into the sellers face.

Roof open, bonnet up at the weekends I eat crispy duck.

IMG_1353 by cort16, on Flickr

There’s not many driving experiences quite like the Avantime I think it’s fair to say Renault cornered the market in 3 door MPV coupes. You sit quite high up and it has a flat floor so it’s kind of like driving a posh transit van. There’s a lot of glass so visibility is good. The downside is it gets really hot in the cabin especially if you’re aircon doesn’t work, which of course mine didn’t. 

It turns out my car was one of 9 cars bought as a fleet from Renault by an IT company called Taylor made.. I imagine much to the amazement and Gratitude of Renault.. .All the cars had sprays in corporate colours, which is a slightly darker shade of blue than the standard car. On my car it was a great paint job and you could still see the marks where  the taylor made decals had been peeled off. (Nigel Taylor of Taylor made) said: “The Avantime particularly appealed as it perfectly matches our company philosophy with its distinctive style, high quality, its practical ergonomics and its ability to stand out from the crowd” You certainly can’t argue about it standing our from the crowd when I mine I had school kids taking selfies with it, people in car washes asking me if was a kit car and general open mouthed confusion in its presence.

I can’t find any record of how Taylor Made got on running 9 Avantimes as for a couple of years but I’ve hear their next fleet was Toyota’s,which could be telling. Having said that I did recently read  out they’ve just switched their fleet to all electric BMW’s i3’s which isn’t exactly a conventional choice. It sounds like the Avantime didn’t put them off weird cars or put them out of business so it couldn’t have gone too badly.

Once I had my Avantime I immediately started using it for my 60 mile a day commute and it iiven it was 11 years old, French and mostly made of plastic it was excellent. I did 6000 miles in 3 months in it and it only required a few things and 1 day in the garage , which was a refreshing change from the BMW that couldn’t seem to go  a single day without a part falling off or oil leaking from another part of the engine.

Given the there was only 500 avantimes sold in UK I was surprised to come out of the supermarket in my relatively small home town and find it parked next to another one. This one was  the silver and the same age. while I did eventually find out were it was kept I never managed to speak to the owner and ask them how they ended up with it. Stalking someone because they have the same car as you is a one way street to a restraining order.

Stalking in progress

IMG_1347 by cort16, on Flickr

 

On the road, First impressions was it was slow.  It would cruise fine but I once found myself out dragged by a couple of pensioners in Vauxhall Agilas. I didn’t expect it to be fast but neither did I expect it to be that slow. While it’s a big car it has a steel monocoque wrapped in fire glass panels and an aluminium roof so it wasn’t a really heavy weight.

Matra had been using this formula for years in it’s own relatively low volume cars.  Most memorable to me is the Rancho.. Launched in  late 70’s it was a soft roader recipe well ahead of the curve with front wheel drive and raised up ground clearance.  The format was even oddly similar to the Avantime, steel chassis, fibre glass body with 3 doors and front wheel drive. They sold nearly 60,000 of them and I still remember them being on the road when I was a kid.. Matra also used this format to develop the first Espace, which they initially tried to  sell as a concept to Peugeot who didn’t want it so the idea was taken up by Renault. As Europe’s first real MPV it was hit and is still in production today although no longer available in the UK.

Anyway, a few weeks Into owner ship I was attempting to free a petrified jelly baby from it’s final resting place in the foot mat of driver side floor and found the aftermarket shag pile mat was actually wedged under the accelerator stopping it from making the last forty percent of it’s journey to the floor and freeing up about 80 brake horse power. It still wasn’t fast but it was a damn site nice to drive.

After a few months i found the flat floor made for a really odd driving position, which gave me a bad back. Even though the car is large the boot looks massive  outside but is quite small inside thanks to some weird intrusions caused by the chassis. Fine for your weekly shopping but not so great if you’re trying to lug a baby travel system that’s about the same size and weight as a VW Up into the back of it.  I really loved the feature, which put the roof back and all the windows down at the same time. It looked and felt great to drive right up until you got over 30 miles a hour when it seemed to conjure up a tornado in the passenger seat and eject anything you didn’t have strapped down in the interior out through the roof and giving you hair like you’ve got your tongue in a 240v socket.

While mainly being used as a work hack I was also  using it as our family car at the weekends. At this point in my life I had a very small child and needed to fit a baby seat in back. While the Avantime does have ISOFIX the odd dynamics caused by it being a huge weird french coupe meant the only way to get the baby safely in the seat to lift her through the rear passenger window.  After 3 months or so I realised that while it had been great so far if I continued to pound 2000 miles a month onto it, it wasn’t going to have a great effect on that car. It being a daily driver I didn’t have time to fix it at my own slow pace so that meant paying regular garage bills. So off I went and bought a brand new dreary Nissan diesel.

At this point I had some serious thoughts about keeping it as a second car. I even half convinced myself that if I held onto it it may even go up in value. However when it came to the crunch and I had to decide between the Renault and buying something even more stupid , stupid is as stupid does and I sold it.

It quickly sold to the editor of a well known classic car magazine who picked it up the day after I got the Nissan and promptly drove it to the South of France without issue. 

The Avantime itself only got to production numbers of around 8000. It was such a sales disaster that when Renault pulled the plug on the Avantime Matra pulled out of automotive production all together. I love that Renault was brave enough do produce the Avantime  as I guess they realised the couldn’t compete with BMW and Mercedes at their own game

I think it in all honestly it was also priced too high and the lack of a turbo diesel on launch hampered it’s sales in main land Europe. Bizarrely the year after the Avantime Renault launched the Vel Satis, which was another weird  car with similiar engine line ups to the Avantime but with 5 doors. It competed directly with the Avantime and while the Vel Satis also sold in relatively low numbers in the UK it must have caused a bit of confusion in the minds of  buyers. Eventually Renault pulled the plug on the Vel Satis in the UK.

When it was facelifted in 2005 Renault discontinued the right hand drive conversions. I dodged financial suicide in 2006 when I convinced myself that I should part exchange my VW Passat for a base spec 3 year old Turbo Diesel Vel satis that had just slipped out of manufacturers warranty. For once being a pennyless idiot worked in my favour and I couldn’t afford it . I was stalked for months by the sales guy given I was probably the one and only person who’d ever shown any interest in it. It’s probably still there now.

Renault also seemed to be suffering some quality issues around these times. Not so much with the Avantime, which was built by Matra. In particular Laguna 2 had what  can only be described as ambitious electric systems and issues with turbo diesel engines some of which weren’t all renaults fault. These issues combined with surly dealers and constantly being at the bottom of reliability surveys hurt sales. The Laguna 3 was by enlarge a good good car with lessons learned from the Laguna 2. However the damage was done and Renault pulled the plug on the Laguna in 2011 and that was the end for large Renaults the UK. The rest of Europe still gets larger Models such as the Talisman and Espace but the best we get in the UK is the Kadjar and it’s stupid key you can’t put on a key ring.

2019 Espace. 

 

Talisman

[Asimo]

Every time I read about sodding Avantimes I go through the same crisis of wanting another one.

V6 Automatic.  Taiga green with the posh, coloured leather, satnav delete. Black steel wheels. (As supplied for snow tyres)

A half size euro-pallet will fit in the boot.  So they are practical.