CarBrandLogos archive · Renault · 1984
Rejected by Chrysler, built by Matra, and it created the European people carrier.
Discover the storyPhoto: Vauxford · CC BY-SA 4.0
The story
Explore the ideas, engineering and context that shaped the Renault Espace, then continue into its specifications and place in the marque's lineage.
01
The project began at Matra, the French aerospace and engineering firm that also built cars, as a one-box family vehicle proposed to Chrysler Europe. Chrysler sold its European operations to Peugeot, Peugeot looked at the idea and declined it, and Matra's Philippe Guedon took the design to Renault instead. Renault agreed to badge and sell it; Matra would build it at Romorantin.
Enviro 2000 , Kuala Lumpur · User:Two hundred percent · CC BY-SA 2.5
02
Matra's construction method made the car possible. Rather than a pressed steel monocoque, the Espace used a galvanised steel spaceframe clothed in bonded plastic composite panels, which suited low volumes, resisted corrosion and kept weight down for something so tall. Inside, all seven seats could be removed individually, the middle and rear rows could be turned to face each other, and the front passenger seat swivelled. Nothing sold in Europe in 1984 offered that.
Espace III jaslo rear · Pitak · CC BY-SA 4.0
03
Buyers took a while to understand it. Sales in the first weeks were almost nil, and the story that barely any cars found owners in the first month has followed the model ever since. Then it caught, and kept catching: within a few years the Espace was the default choice for large French families, and every major European manufacturer was building a rival. Renault stretched the idea into the long-wheelbase Grand Espace and, in 1994, into the Espace F1, a one-off show car with a Formula One V10 behind the seats.
Paris - Retromobile 2014 - Matra Projet P18 - 1981 - 002 · Thesupermat · CC BY-SA 3.0
04
The fourth generation moved to conventional steel construction and Renault's own plants, ending the Matra relationship and, with it, Matra's car business. The fifth reinvented the car as a low crossover MPV in 2015, and in 2023 the sixth abandoned the format entirely to become a seven-seat SUV on the Austral's platform. The badge survives, then, but the thing it named has been absorbed by the segment it inspired.
At a glance
Produced
1984–presentBody
5-door Multi-purpose vehicleTechnical specification
Badge at launch
This is the marque emblem that accompanied the Espace's era. The full identity timeline is documented in the brand archive.
Explore the logo history →From the journal
Contemporaries from the 1980s
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