Design Review: Renault Scenic
Has the gamble of trading practicality for style paid off?
Renault invented the small MPV with the first Scenic in 1996. Taking little more road space than the Mégane with which it shared a platform, the Scenic featured a substantially increased interior volume and numerous clever design features and functions which appealed to both families and empty nesters.
But with the small MPV market in significant decline, Renault has once again chosen to re-think one of its big nameplates. Following in the footsteps of the bigger Espace, the Scenic is re-cast in a more crossover style, its core graphics and surface language clearly previewed by 2011’s R-Space concept. But can the creators of MPV typology rethink the concept and make it attractive to those who seem hooked on crossovers while retaining its core appeal?
Proportions
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1 Rolling on dubs
The stand-out element of the design is that every Scenic is fitted with 20-inch wheels as standard. This must have been a huge battle for design to win but their impact is obvious, without overtaking the rest of the design.
2 Coke bottle
Controlled surface softness, based on form not lines, is the antithesis of Volkswagen’s surface language. The DLO and rocker create a pinched bodyside and three primary light catching surfaces over front wheel, rear shoulder and lower door to give a taught voluptuousness.
3 DLO whimsy
On the R-Space concept, this element worked because of the rear door shut (suggested here in red). Here it feels whimsical.
4 Biggy smalls
Those big wheels can make the Scenic look smaller than it is, with a wheelbase less than three wheel diameters between. It certainly doesn’t communicate a sense of interior space.
5 Solidity
Strong C-pillar has been a design constant for the last three generations and lives on here, giving the car structure and strength around the rear
6 Parabola
Single roof arc and lower overall height combine with muscular lower body and wheels to give a robustness that’s normally absent from MPVs, and visually links the Scenic to the Espace
7 Tale of two halves
Body-to-glass ratio similar to other MPVs at the front, but the rear treatment has more in common with crossovers
Tech Spec
First seen Geneva / March 2016
Type C-segment MPV
Length 4406mm
Wheelbase 2734mm
Width 1865mm
Height 1653mm
CdA 0.775