Vel Satis will change view of Renault
You’ll see it here from mid-April. You won’t see too many of it. And you’ll have seen nothing like it on Ireland’s roads. Ever.
With a name like Vel Satis, which actually doesn’t mean anything, it has to be different. From a designer like Patrick Le Quement, who with other employers was also responsible for the Ford Sierra, Audi A6, and the Twingo, Laguna and Laguna II from Renault, you can expect a ‘pushing out of the envelope’.
Vel Satis requires a completely new ‘envelope’.
It’s a big car, but designed for just four people. People who will ride in the utmost luxury, and in what Le Quement told me - and I had already found out for myself - last week is almost a ‘drawing room on wheels’.
They’ll get in and out with decorum and ease, because the Vel Satis is higher by 13cm than cars such as the A6 and the BMW 5-series against which it is being pitched.
(A little bit of irony here, isn’t there? ... Le Quement taking as his primary target a car he designed himself in another part of his career.)
They’ll sit on leather seats which are chunkier than anything I’ve sat in outside of a said plush drawing room, and with electric adjustment opportunities beyond anything I’ve seen before.
And they will admire a choice of wood trims with real marquetry inserts, some of which cleverly hides cupholders and coins (or jewellery) tray.
The whole caboodle is pulled along by a choice of petrol and diesel engines, 2- and 3.5-litre in the former and 2.2- and 3-litre in the latter. Power outputs range from 150bhp (2.2 oilburner) to 245bhp for the V6 petrol. There’s also a 3-litre V6 turbodiesel.
It was the two V6 engines that I drove last week, and found myself hard put to decide which was the better. The diesel, of course, would be considerably more economical. Both were mated to a 5-speed autobox with tiptronic-style manual gearchanging. Both were awesomely quiet at idle, and not a lot more noisy when driving fast. They tell us that the noise levels in the car are 50% of what is the average in the segment. It is believable.
There are a whole host of technical and comfort goodies, and no less than eight airbags lead the safety front. Most of them I’ll leave until I get a chance to do a full review of the car in Ireland. But there’s one little gizmo that is bound to gladden the hearts of all those who hate hill-starts (most of whom seem to be women, by the way).
Instead of a handbrake, the Vel Satis has a parking brake which automatically comes on when the car stops, and undoes itself again when the engine torque increases preparatory to moving off. It is standard on both manual and automatic cars, and a side benefit is that it will not allow the car to roll backwards on a hill unless the car is in reverse.
Staying on safety, the Vel Satis has of course ABS and allied technologies, including traction control.
A 6-speed manual gearbox is available, though I’m reckoning that most people will want this one in automatic. An interesting thing is that the Renault people in France are expecting a 70/30 split between diesel and petrol, which is even accelerating the move towards majority diesel buying in the luxury segment on the Continent. And 25% of sales are expected there to be powered by V6 engines of either petrol or diesel variety.
In France, the car will sell for between 30,300-46,700 euros. There are no prices available here, but the Irish distributors have decided that all models in Ireland will have leather seats and wood trim, rather than the slightly more downmarket (but not much) velour and aluminium.
In a full year, Renault are hoping with this new car to take some 3% of a segment which numbers around 1.6 million cars in Europe, three-quarters of the segment sales located in just three countries - Germany, France and the UK. In Ireland they’re planning to sell a modest 300 Vel Satis units.
It’s not the numbers that they feel are important, but the serious upward image the car will give to the car buyers’ perception of the brand. And many of the design cues and the technology used in Vel Satis are going to appear in upcoming versions of its more bread-and-butter vehicles.
You’re lookin’ good, Renault.
