Renault Scenic Dynamique review

A plastic car? You’re welcome to it.

In the olden days, cars were made from steel, and that’s only right and proper. Steel is as manly as Tarzan’s scrotum. Horny-handed sons of toil mine the iron ore using dynamite and huge excavators, and then this is turned into steel in giant foundries that are hot, dangerous and noisy. A steel foundry is the exact opposite of Jane Austen.

Today we live in different times. Cars can no longer be manly because it is now offensive to be in possession of a penis. Or to let it do your thinking. This means cars must be kind to the environment, economical, cheap and safe, and that means they must be made from plastic. Today, you will find plastic panels on almost every car made. It’s easy to see why. It’s light, which means less fuel is needed to cart it around, and that means fewer emissions. It’s cheaper than steel, which means greater profits for the manufacturer, which means your pension fund is healthier.

The trouble is that you can always tell when a panel on a car is plastic. I don’t mean when you tap it; I mean when you look at it. There’s something about the way it’s curved or creased, and about how it looks when painted. All of this stirs your limbic system, which says: “That’s crap.”

And that brings me to the snappily named Renault Scenic Dynamique S Nav dCi 110. Pop into your dealership and within about five minutes, no matter how gormless and cheaply suited the salesman might be, you will be slack-jawed in amazement and ready to sell your children for the chance to own such a thing.

It’s got a head-up display, for crying out loud. I don’t mean a system like those you find in high-end BMWs and the F/A-18 Hornet, where the information you need is projected onto the windscreen. I mean a system where an electronic panel rises from the top of the dash. You are going to be seriously excited when you first see this in operation.

There’s a huge glass sunroof with an electric blind, a big touchscreen, DAB radio, leather upholstery, cruise control and a system that wakes you up if you’re getting drowsy, along with more systems that keep you in the correct lane and ensure your lights dip automatically when a car is coming the other way. It can even recognise road signs.

You can change the colour of the interior lighting and, in case you need to give Puff Snoop a lift to a gig, you get blacked-out windows in the back. All this stuff is provided as standard for £25,445. Which, on the face of it, makes this the bargain of the century.

Then you’re going to step out of the cabin to take in the exterior styling, and you’ll like that too. As a general rule I loathe cars of this type but this… this is very, very attractive.

Obviously, it isn’t a racing car. Yes, it has racy wheels, but there’s a perfectly ordinary 1.5-litre diesel engine that turns fuel into a dribble of performance; 0-100km/h takes 12.4 seconds, which would have been considered woeful 30 years ago but today, in health-and-safety Britain, is par for the course. Then the salesman is going to tell you it’s capable of 3.9 litres per 100km. I don’t doubt for a moment that this is true. In the same way as I’m capable of running the 100m sprint in roughly the same time as Usain Bolt. In normal use you won’t get anything like 3.9L/100km out of it, but it’s still very economical.

And practical. The rear seats, I admit, are a bit of a squash if you are burly or long, but the boot’s huge and the floor moves about to make it versatile as well. You can even buy a longer version that has seven seats.

So here we have a good-looking, well-equipped, practical, economical car that is exceptional value for money. Except it isn’t. Because the more you look at it, the more you realise there’s something wrong. A lot of this car is made from plastic. And somehow you know. Which means you know it’s crap.

And I’m sorry, but all that equipment provided as standard? It sounds tremendous, but it does make you wonder about the quality of it all. And the more you wonder, the more you start to think that maybe the new Scenic is like one of those Korean music centres you could buy for £25.99 in the 1980s. They had the flashing lights and twin tape decks and graphic equalisers. But they were in no way a substitute for the mix’n’match alternatives from Garrard, Marsden Hall, Akai, Teleton and so on.

There’s another problem, too. Look up now and say to your family, “I’m thinking of buying a Renault Scenic Dynamique S Nav dCi 110”, and see if anyone is the slightest bit interested. Thought not.

Fast facts:

Renault Scenic Dynamique Engine: 1.5-litre turbocharged four-cylinder diesel (81kW/260Nm) Average fuel 4.0 litres per 100km TRANSMISSION: Seven-speed automatic, front-wheel drive PRICE: £25,445 (not available in Australia)