I’m sure that most of us who love cars happen to have developed that fondness because of one particular car in the family and one core memory hinged around it.
I reckon that it usually stems from pretty early – those moments between learning to walk and writing your name – and it very often turns out to be quite mundane, at least on reflection.
For me that would be the Renault Scenic. Ours was a Mk1 facelift (or Phase Two, in Renault speak). I couldn’t tell you which engine it had nor what year it joined the family, but I can tell you it was finished in maroon red and had colour-matched plastics. Quelle beauté.
My mum bought it at some point in 2002 or 2003, wanting something bigger than our Skoda Fabia for when my younger brother came along.
I wasn’t bothered by any such practicalities, of course. All that really mattered to me, as a two-ish-year-old, was that it was an interesting colour and had fold-out tables in the back. I’m fairly certain I was sold on it when my parents bought a portable DVD player and a copy of Monsters, Inc and plonked it in front of me.
Some of my earliest memories are of watching various Pixar flicks as we drove overnight to some backwater caravan park for a holiday, trying to watch through the glare of amber street lights outside. I’m sure my mum and dad enjoyed the (relative) silence they’d have got as a result, too.
When all I really knew of cars was that they went brum-brum, those flimsy fold-out airline tables were an absolute game-changer.
Fantastic as the new Scenic might be – I’m sure it’s wonderful, having heard many positive things from colleagues – it doesn’t have the flat-pack activity tray/dining area and is therefore dead to me. I’m not normally one to be offended by the re-use of old names on completely new products: I couldn’t really care less about Fords Capri and Puma becoming chunky SUVs. But a Scenic without tables? That one stings a little.
Sadly, my family’s time with the Scenic came to an abrupt end one morning in 2005 when, for reasons never explained, the engine fell out. I always thought it had gone in dramatic fashion on the M25, but no, its fate was rather less interesting. It just happened to give up one night, parked outside our flat.
After some argument, Renault bought the car back and gave us a handsome deal on a 1.2-litre Clio fresh off their demo fleet. It lasted my mum 13 years and 40,000 miles, but it was no Scenic.