Renault Avantime
car model
The Renault Avantime is a car which was marketed by the French manufacturer Renault and designed and manufactured by Matra between 2001 and 2003. As a one-box design without B-pillars, styled by Patrick Le Quément, the Avantime combined the design elements of a multi-purpose vehicle (MPV), estate car, or shooting brake with the style of a 2+2 coupé and elements of a convertible. It was self-described by Renault as a grand tourer.
The name "Avantime" is a portmanteau of the French word "Avant" (meaning "ahead") and the English 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 Renault affiliate Matra and was conceived by Philippe Guédon, head of the automotive division at Matra, who "believed that the children of Espace 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 Patrick Le Quément, the Avantime was intended to combine the space of an estate with the four place pillarless qualities of a coupé. Regarding the styling, Thierry Métroz, 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.
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This entry incorporates text from “Renault Avantime” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.