We looked into buy a car after Oscar arrived, the previous summer's heat and fitting things in and out of a three door car was getting to be a pain in the back, literally. So the quest began, five magazines and dozens of webpages later we settled on a second hand, but recent Renault Scénic. It is the original European MPV, sort of a big hatchback, ours has only five seats. It is not a 4x4 nor a minibus, it has acquired the totoro nickname catbus already. It delights in the colour Ottoman Blue, as shown.
The factory where they are made in Douai, near Lille looks intriguing on Google Maps, but you can get a peek in these aerial shots, the lowest level of detail on Google is hidden, so as to not give away the prototypes I guess.
What else did I learn on the journey, well car magazines mainly disagree with one another, but on aggregate say similar things, but they often are contradicted by their user reports. I learnt a lot about car technologies, as our last car was eight years old and they have got a lot safer and have more toys now. Euro-NCAP have been doing a great job at raising the debate on safety now that rust-proofing and reliability are pretty much a given.
We've now had the car for a year or so and we love it. Clever things like the lack of a car key, it uses an RFID credit card sized token instead. This handsfree car key is excellent, with a baby boy in one arm, I only need open the door, it unlocks for me. Then there are nice simple automation touches like the automatic windscreen wipers or the headlights that work out if it is dark and turn on, perfect in tunnels.
It is also quite nippy, turbo diesels are surprisingly powerful these days. If you want numbers 130bhp and 0-60 in under 10 seconds. It makes driving feel safe, knowing that it can pull out of a situation easily, particularly in the 30-50 mph on the bigger roads in London. Last summer we drove to the Loire in France and it was delightful, quiet, fast, fun and held everything.
When chatting to fellow fathers soon after the birth of Oscar, it became clear that most people had got a new(ish) car around that time and virtually all of them had got a turbo diesel. It seems they are the engine of choice, at least in Europe, I'm aware they have an undeserved reputation for being noisy in the USA. I suspect it is a way of getting a more powerful car without buying the ludicrous petrol top of the range model. It looks like a quieter beast, but secretly it is quite a brute.
The Scénic is one of the few cars in the world which had a woman as the primary designer, I think you can tell. There are so many practical additions to the car, like rear seats on rails, so that you can slide your child towards you from the front seats. Sunblinds which are attached to the door, clipping to the top of the window, so that they don't fall off and you could open the window for some air, whilst leaving the sun blind attached.
Buying a new car is not something we did lightly, as they take a lot of energy to produce. We sold on our old car, so it is still being used. We take the train to work everyday and use the car for longer journeys. Perhaps we could live without a car altogether, like some friends do, but with a child a car feels more justifiable.
