The New Renault Espace Stops Being Weird And Becomes A Crossover

The Renault Espace, Europe’s first modern minivan, is now a crossover. While this isn’t a sky-is-falling event, it’s a bit disheartening to see Renault use a nameplate famed for practical people carriers on a rather inoffensive-looking stretched cousin of the Nissan Rogue. Don’t get me wrong, it looks perfectly competitive, but I just don’t think it’s weird enough given the history of the Espace nameplate.

Upon first glance, the new Espace looks like a perfectly normal crossover. It has sharp creases over its haunches, a waterfall grille, some black cladding, and a two-box silhouette. That’s because it is one, as it’s really just a stretched version of the Renault Austral crossover.

Still, Renault has done a fine job at differentiating the two vehicles by altering fascias and keeping the Espace’s roof in body color. The end result is a decent-looking crossover roughly the size of a North American-spec Volkswagen Tiguan.

Outside of the giant handrest in the center console, there’s not anything particularly strange about the new Espace’s interior. It’s got a digital gauge cluster, a portrait-oriented infotainment screen, ambient lighting, and normal seats. I definitely like the unusual contouring of the infotainment screen bezel and the steering wheel looks very nice, but very little here looks hugely more special than the cabin in a new Mitsubishi Outlander.

Come to think of it, both the Outlander and the new Espace ride on the same platform, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the optional third row is tight in this French machine.

It shouldn’t be terribly surprising to hear that the new Espace is a hybrid. Diesels are so passe and Europe is dealing with some real blowback over plug-in hybrids (because drivers often weren’t charging them) so this very family-sized machine makes do with a series-parallel setup.

The combustion engine is only a 1.2-liter three-cylinder lump, but its turbocharged and paired with two electric motors to deliver 200 combined metric horsepower. A perfectly adequate number for a vehicle this size, if not an especially thrilling one. The other mechanical highlight is available rear-wheel steering, which should be useful for squeaking through tight European city streets.

It’s fine. But a walk down Espace memory lane makes us wistful for stranger, more creative days.

The first Espace was built by everyone’s favorite missile and three-seat sports coupe maker Matra out of an abandoned Simca project. It used fiberglass panels on a steel monocoque, its front seats could swivel to face rearward, its dashboard had an enormous ashtray and mildly confounding wiper controls, and its radiator was crammed right to the left side of the engine bay due to a decision to switch from a transverse layout to a longitudinal layout halfway through the program.

The Mk1 Espace may seem almost normal today, but it was properly weird in 1984.

The second-generation Espace got an even weirder look with unusually streamlined side mirrors that almost look melted into the windscreen cowl. Sure, this was fundamentally a re-skinning of the Mk1 Espace with the new Renault look, but it also got a new dashboard with an even bigger ashtray and gloriously asymmetric instruments.

What’s more, it spawned what might be the coolest van of all time – the Renault Espace F1. This is exactly what it sounds like, a minivan with a Renault RS5 V10 F1 engine where the rear seats would normally go and an enormous widebody.

While the third-generation Espace looks like an evolution of the Mk2 model on the outside, opening the door feels like stepping into a funhouse. Why? Well, the glove box is in the middle of the dashboard. Two enormous storage compartments stretch from basically the steering column to more or less the middle of the front passenger seat.

To make way for this, the Espace’s gauges are digital units in the middle of the dashboard, its shifter protrudes from the dashboard in a very unusual manner, and the dials for HVAC temperature are on the extreme edges of the dashboard. Add in big swaths of fabric and a positively panoramic view out, and this is one of the all-time great weird cockpits.

The fourth-generation Espace adopted significantly sharper styling with more hard creases that followed the Renault design language of the aughts. What’s more, it still had four conventional doors and was available in two lengths. As a result, it still looks weird, and perhaps unsurprisingly, it still has a weird cabin. The giant storage cubbies in the middle of the dashboard continue, except now there’s also a glovebox on the passenger side, and there are two more storage cubbies far up on the dashboard.

Obviously, this once again required clever climate controls, so it got what’s perhaps best described as a Nest thermostat in each door card. Oh, and the throttle pedal was hinged off of its side for some reason.

Sadly, the fifth-generation Espace wasn’t nearly as weird as its predecessors, but it still had strange touches. It was still extremely cab-forward, had a great set of taillights, and got a boomerang-shaped gear knob, but the crossover influence was starting to seep in. The dashboard was less concerned about being unabashedly utilitarian and more concerned about infotainment. Sure, this thing did the whole glovebox drawer thing years before the Hyundai Ioniq 5, but the rest of the cabin has a hint of Buick to it. In hindsight, this Espace was likely a sign of things to come.

While the new Renault Espace seems perfectly competitive in the crossover segment, it doesn’t seem competitive as an Espace. After all, Espace is French for space. By going with a traditional crossover form, Renault has abandoned most of the clever packaging and storage tricks that made the Espace awesome in the first place.

The whole French car industry is, on the whole, getting less weird. Blame consolidation with Stellantis or just changing buyer trends, maybe. But Citroën hasn’t made an air suspension in years and the “Air Bumps” on the Cactus are almost nonexistent now. If Citroën can’t be bothered to get weird anymore, what hope does Renault have?

It’s a shame to see an iconic minivan absorbed by the crossover kingdom, but I guess that’s life in the crossover age. Still, imagine if someone went all-in on an ultra-practical city-sized three-row minivan today. Wouldn’t that be lovely?

(Photo credits: Renault)

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