► This month we go on an adventure
► How much space do we really need?
► Read month 5
Growing up, I was taken to school in a string of Peugeot and Renault family cars. I still recall the baby-blue Renault 4 we had, with the dash-mounted, umbrella-handle gearchange that seemed so weird and wonderful even then.
But what really staggers me – now I’ve grown up and had kids of my own – is how we actually went on holiday in these tiny cars. Nowadays, a Land Rover Defender 130 is barely big enough to fit all the expeditionary equipment, food rations, wardrobes, wellies, electronic hardware, charging cables and salt-and-vinegar-flavoured snacks needed for even a brief weekend away.
My earliest holiday memory is of heading off for a week in the Lake District in a burgundy Renault 16, that groundbreaking, award-winning hatchback of the 1960s and ’70s. Our tiny Clio actually has a bigger boot than the 16. How the hell did we manage a week in Windermere? There were FIVE of us.
All of this came to mind the other day when we went for a few days away in the Clio: four of us, plus a dog. I was briefly tempted to borrow another of our long-term test cars – perhaps Ben’s i5 Touring or Ben’s E-2008 or maybe Ben’s Skoda Enyaq? But then I got confused about which Ben was which…
And anyway, what’s the point of running a long-termer if you bail the moment it’s inconvenient? I loaded up the boot so densely the whole rear end of the car resembled a well-played game of Tetris, and we set off.
The experience highlighted several things. For one, the parcel shelf feels like it’s made of egg-box cardboard – only light duties, please. And the seatbelt buckles in the back are almost impossible to angle in the right direction to do up, if you have child seats. Also, with two kids in the back, the middle seat is barely big enough for a dog, never mind another human.
But apart from these grumbles the Clio once again shone through, as a highly competent and enjoyable family car. It’s true, compared to the luxury of a Defender 130 (which costs five times as much) there’s absolutely no spreading out – everyone in the car has their allocated space and it all falls apart very quickly if anyone spills something, drops something or wants to take off their jumper.
But if everyone stays in lane, then the legroom is good, even when you’re all jammed in, and there are plenty of cubbyholes and door pockets to pack away all those salt-and-vinegar-flavoured snacks.
Being fully loaded didn’t make much difference to performance or the fuel economy either, though two kids and a dog did stifle my chances of some lift-off-oversteer fun.
There’s no denying this trip was a tight squeeze in the Clio but I’m beginning to think maybe this trend for bigger SUVs is pure self-indulgence. Our parents’ generation was right – you really don’t need that big, expensive SUV.
Logbook: Renault Clio TCe 90 Evolution (month 5)
Price: £17,995 (£18,695 as tested)
Performance: 999cc turbo three-cylinder, 89bhp, 12.2sec 0-62mph, 112mph
Efficiency: 54.3mpg (official), 44.1mpg (tested), 118g/km CO2
Energy cost: 15.9p
Miles this month: 1433
Total miles: 6576