Although many consider the Renault Espace as the first minivan in history, in reality it was not. However, it did promote the birth and popularization of the segment, despite the fact that its commercial start was difficult and was about to cost it its demise.
Introduced in April 1984 and released just before the summer, it seemed destined for failure: only 9 units were sold in the first month. But when prejudice that it was 'like a van' gave way to enthusiasm for its comfort and practicality, it ended up being a success.
The minivan concept, born almost 40 years ago, had a very important boom. Such was its good reception that the idea was extended to both smaller and larger models, and forced most manufacturers to enter it. It should be noted that in recent times it is being cannibalized by SUVs.
The Espace was not originally intended for Renault, but was Matra's work for Simca or, perhaps, to resurrect the Talbot marque, building on a design made at Chrysler's British division in the mid-1970s.
At that time, Matra - a group specialized in defense and the aerospace industry - had a small production of automobiles. The Matra Rancho country version, built on a Simca base, no longer gave any more play and they were looking for a new niche.
Philippe Guenon, Matra's boss, made a trip to the United States and saw there the interest aroused by the 'van', that is, passenger versions of vans, which many customers adapted to their tastes and hobbies. That convinced him that the future of the automobile lay in recreational, family, and recreational vehicles with remarkable interior space.
At Matra they 'recovered' Fergus Pollock's design for Chrysler, and built a prototype based on a Simca 1307, called P21, using many parts of it. In 1978, Chrysler UK and Simca passed into the hands of PSA -that is, Peugeot and Citroën, which are currently part of the Stellantis group-, which decided to end the Simca brand. Thus the project was dismissed, which was returned to Matra. They understood that it was expensive and excessively risky.
Desperate, Matra's men pitched it to Renault, where they were receptive to its president, Bernard Hanon, who was immediately seduced by the idea. Hanon had been with Renault's American subsidiary for a long time and was well aware of the interest in vans in that country. The idea was to offer a passenger van but with the dynamic characteristics, comfort and equipment of a car.
The distinctive signs were very clear. It had to be a tall car, with high seats and an upright position so that they took up less longitudinal space and had more capacity in the trunk. Likewise, it should be able to offer 7 seats, with independent and adjustable seats. The five seats in the two rear rows could be removed from the vehicle - all or just some - to create a large cargo space and had to have a large glass area. With five occupants, the trunk reached 780 liters, double that of a car of its similar size.
Matra had to change many things in the project. The platform was going to be that of the R18 and the engine would no longer be positioned transversely but longitudinally, with front-wheel drive. The Espace was born and Matra was going to take charge of manufacturing it for Renault. A name was needed and it came up immediately: one of the characteristics of the model was its large interior space, which is why it was named Espace (space in French).
The first Espace seemed very large in 1984, but today we would consider it small: it measured only 4.25 m in length for a width of 1.78 and a height of 1.66 m. It had a 110bhp 2-litre petrol engine and an 88bhp 2.1-litre turbodiesel. The body was made of fiber to gain weight. The suspensions, independent.
Over time came more powerful engines, automatic gearboxes, and four-wheel drive. In subsequent generations it grew in size, adopted sliding side doors and a third row of folding seats in the trunk, much more practical than those that could be removed because they were heavy. There was even a larger version -so that the 7-seater configuration had a trunk worthy of the name-, the Grand Espace. And the Avantime was also launched, with the appearance of a luxury coupe and four seats.
When Renault introduced a restyling in 1988, almost 192,000 units of the Espace I had been sold. In 1991, it launched the second generation. The fifth generation started the change showing some aspects of SUV, which has now been culminated with the sixth. In total, Renault has produced about 1,400,000 Espaces between all generations.
