Renault Safrane

The Renault Safrane was an automobile designed and built by French manufacturer Renault from 1992 to 1998. Throughout its lifespan it remained the most expensive and most luxurious Renault available. It was replaced by the two-door Avantime and the four-door Vel Satis.

Overview

The Safrane was launched in late 1992 as a 1993 model to replace the ageing Renault 25 in the full-size market segment. Its clean, aerodynamic styling was quite conservative and very typical of early 1990s car design; it was also quite similar to the 25's.

All Safranes were four-door hatchbacks with transversely mounted engines. Front-wheel-drive and all-wheel-drive versions were available, with a range of petrol or diesel engines and manual or automatic transmissions.

All petrol engines were fuel-injected and were fitted with three-way catalytic converters, as required in Europe after 1993 for engines of all sizes.

The Safrane was also the first Renault to be equipped with air bags.

History

The Safrane carried over the Renault 25's four-door hatchback design that had gained wide customer acceptance in France. Renault was aware of other markets' lack of enthusiasm for hatchbacks in the full-size market segment but pressed on anyway, not least out of the need to differentiate the Safrane against its established German competitors and avoid a head-on confrontation it was certain to lose.

The Safrane's design made a deliberate effort to overcome the 25's main weaknesses--insufficient chassis stiffness and poor build quality. Also, Renault was keen to take noise reduction to best-in-class levels. These constraints resulted in a much heavier car than its predecessor (+200-300 kg / 440-660 lb.) due to a heavily reinforced chassis and the liberal use of sound-proofing materials.

At launch in 1992, the Safrane offered six engines including one diesel:

• 2.0-liter, 8-valve inline-4, 107 bhp (on markets such as France where engine size was a factor in yearly registration costs)
• 2.2-liter, 8-valve inline-4, 110 bhp (on other markets)
• 2.0-liter, 12-valve inline-4, 140 bhp (only on markets such as Italy where engines above 2 liters are heavily taxed)
• 2.2-liter, 12-valve inline-4, 140 bhp (on other markets)
• 3.0-liter, 12-valve V-6, 170 bhp
• 2.1-liter, 8-valve inline-4 turbodiesel, 90 bhp

The Safrane's launch was free of the grave build quality problems that ruined the Renault 25's career. Critics praised the car's comfortable and spacious interior, excellent noise insulation, and incisive handling. However, the manual transmission's cable-actuated shifter (a first on a Renault) drew heavy criticism for its rubbery, uncommunicative feeling that spoiled the driving experience--a significant issue on the European market where more than 80% of cars sold are manuals. Above all, the car's acceleration and fuel economy was not up to the competition's standards. The base 4-cylinder engines were simply overmatched by the car's 1,500-kg (3,300-lb.) heft. The 12-valve 2.2-liter was barely adequate with a manual transmission and lacked the necessary low-range torque to work well with an automatic. Even the top-of-the-line V6 model, though capable of decent performance in absolute terms, did not stand the comparison with the German references of the time, the Mercedes-Benz 300E and BMW 530i. As a result, sales outside France (where national preference guaranteed good results) remained limited to customers who needed a hatchback for some reason or other, and the Safrane did not break the Germans' lock on the full-size market.