Wagon Wednesday – 1990 Renault Espace GTX Injection

I do believe our Wagon Wednesday series is in need of some green plastic box goodness. No-one does green this vividly anymore, as everything is metallic this and pearl effect that. No, this 1990 Renault Espace is good old bright green, and the panels are plastic. That doesn’t mean they haven’t need to be clearcoated, and that doesn’t mean the clearcoat wouldn’t peel like lizard skin.

I shot the Espace at a cobblestone market square in southern Helsinki, just a fairly literal stone’s throw from the shipyards and what used to be a brewery. In fact, when this Espace was new, the brick building behind it produced loads and loads of Sinebrychoff beer daily.

And hauling beer would be just the thing the Espace would be good at, as you probably could chuck the now-stained seats fairly easily and stock it up with Koff Porter, one of my favourite dark beers and one that’s even available across the Atlantic.

The Espace is in various shades of green by now, as it has worn several stickers in its time, and some of the corners have in turn turned paler green.

In the TGV train resembling nose lives an eight-valve, two-litre four-cylinder engine producing 105 horsepower. An interesting tidbit is that the Espace was born a British design by Fergus Pollock, originally intended to be sold as a Talbot, but ended up being produced for Renault by Matra, who had been building a fiberglass, three-abreast seating sports car called the Murena until the Espace deal meant they had to axe the Murena so they wouldn’t compete with the Alpine Renaults. It’s like a soap opera plot, only more interesting and logical. Famously, during the first month after the initial Espace launch in 1984, nine cars were sold. It was a grower.

The car got re-skinned by the early ’90s, so this one is one of the last years of the old nose. The shape didn’t change much, but the looks were integrated better to the Renault family.

One of the things I’ll probably go into my grave without ever experiencing is a 25-30-year-old, 200 000+ km French fiberglass minivan on cobblestones. I think the chattery jittery squeak it would emit would break my brain.

[Images: Copyright 2013 Hooniverse/Antti Kautonen]