01
Origins
The SM7 of 2004 topped Renault Samsung's saloon hierarchy: a Nissan Teana-based executive car dressed for Korean tastes — chrome dignity, plush velour-to-leather cabins, V6 options — competing against Hyundai's Grandeur for the affections of directors and hotel fleets. It offered the marque's characteristic proposition: Japanese mechanical serenity with specification Hyundai charged extra for, at a price that undercut imports. Two generations served through the 2010s before the segment's SUV erosion and the company's contraction retired it without successor. The SM7 marks Renault Samsung's high-water ambition — a genuine flagship from the Busan experiment — before the marque settled into the crossover-and-rebadge pragmatism of its Renault Korea era. Its buyers got precisely what they paid for, which in the executive class is rarer than it sounds.
Renault Talisman 03 Auto Chongqing · Navigator84 · CC BY-SA 3.0
