The Estoque is Lamborghini letting the world know that it is soon set to produce a four-door front-engined sedan: a riposte to the forthcoming Porsche Panamera, Aston Martin Rapide, BMW CS and the current Maserati Quattroporte.
The design is based on a production-feasible package with a front-mid mounted Gallardo V10 engine, four wheel drive, and dimensions of 1.35m height, 5.15m length, 1.99m width, and a 3.01m wheelbase.
As a new Lamborghini this car provoked a lot of interest at the show, not least because Lamborghini have never made a four-door sedan, although we have seen four-door Lamborghinis before: the 1986 LM002 SUV and the 1987 Portofino concept to name but two.
The Estoque has an intrinsic dynamism and attraction from its proportions and from its Reventon-inspired detailing, but it also seemed a missed opportunity not to introduce slightly more ‘wow' into its proportions and its core theme: strip away the slightly superficial detailing, and the design is handsome in an old fashioned and conventional way - slightly reminiscent of the 1979 Bitter SC sedan.
The interior is more impressive with starkly contrasting white and charcoal gray on the IP and around the hexagonal door handles. Archetypal Lamborghini themes, such as the Countach style flat IP top, translate successfully to give a supercar feel to an otherwise spacious four-seat cockpit.
The super premium four door coupe is, ironically in the current economic climate, one of the emergent vehicle typologies. Lamborghini clearly want a slice of this market and it makes sense for their brand, but the Estoque fails in too many ways to make a convincing case.
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Like all major Renault show cars in the recent past, there are many aspects to the Ondelious to report. The most striking of these is the single surface exterior which rolls around the car like an aircraft fuselage, wrapping up the hood seamlessly into the windshield, and around the cabin with no break for the window area. Side glazing on the Ondelious runs down to the base of the huge gull-wing doors, but with a smoky gray metallic exterior the DLO is not read conventionally, which adds to the seamless exterior aesthetic.
The front aspect of the car is defined by several slim horizontal bands of white plastic that flow backwards into the car around the large back-lit Renault logo-mark.
At the rear, the exterior surface stops abruptly and the interior volume visually protrudes out with tail light sandwiched between this and the outer surface. The top half of the tailgate rolls up also inside the outer surface of the car, whilst the lower half opens like a door.
Inside there are three rows of two individual seats which wrap around the occupants to give each a clearly demarked personal space in a similar way to a first class aircraft seat. Some of the many other interesting interior elements include the chunky but flowing pedals in cast aluminium, seats that fade upwards from dark blue to burnt orange, and door armrests floating about 5cm off the glazed surface and housing an LED display that is read from outside of the car.
The Ondelious is a somewhat bulky car and one that few designers we spoke to felt was a very attractive design. But with its wealth of ideas, it does still show how Renault still delivers some of the best concept car designs in the world.
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This third generation Megane from Renault is probably the most significant new production debut here at Paris. It replaces one of the most avante garde designs in the recent history of mainstream European car design: a design that was critically and commercially successful, if not without its detractors, who felt that such a distinctive design needlessly polarised potential customers.
The new Megane takes no cues from its predecessor, but does share much of its form language with the larger Laguna that debuted this time last year.
The five-door and three-door variants are more distinct from each other as they were on the first generation Megane but unlike that car they now share the same wheelbase, which is visually slightly too long on the coupesque three-door variant.
In the flesh, the design is handsome and has many subtle details such as the dished hood surface, Renault concept car-influenced rear three quarter aspect in the three-door variant, and the unique flowing side feature crease.
The interior is also far more closely related to the new Laguna than the previous Megane, with soft touch plastics and a high quality perception, albeit still a clear step away from the new Golf 6.
But ultimately the new Megane underwhelms. Most designers we spoke felt that it lacked the distinction and modernity of several key competitors, not least the two year old Citroen C4. And for existing Megane customers, there will be some disappointment at the reduction in the number and size of the interior storage spaces and rear sun blinds that made the previous generation design a uniquely practical ownership proposition. With sales of the new Laguna much lower than predicted, it seems quite likely that this new ‘safe' direction that Renault seem to be taking with design isn't very safe at all.
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