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  1. Five cars that seemed like a good idea at the time
  2. Renault Avantime, Too far ahead of its time
  3. Mercedes-Benz R-Class, R you joking?
  4. Volkswagen Phaeton, Stranded flagship
  5. Jaguar X-Type, X-Factor? It's a no from us.
  6. DeLorean DMC-12, Time travail

Renault Avantime, Too far ahead of its time

The Avantime gleaned its name from an amalgam of the French word for 'ahead' and the English word 'time'. And the coupé/MPV crossover may well have been ahead of its time, but we're evidently still waiting for that time to arrive. Unveiled in 1999 at Geneva, the Avantime took two years to reach production - reputedly because it took Renault that long to make it safe enough for public use.

It needn't have bothered, because selling 435 in the UK didn't even qualify it as having reached the public. The Avantime was supposed to combine the style of a coupé with the space of a people-carrier and the luxury of an executive car (a field Renault was dabbling in at the time with another car, the equally catastrophic Vel Satis). Unfortunately, the clumsy coupé offered the worst of all worlds: it was too big and horribly offensive to be a coupé, useless as an MPV because it only had three doors and really expensive, yet constructed using production techniques that even the Russian automobile industry had long since left behind.

It was dropped after two years, without even an attempt to save it with a facelift. True to form, however, everybody loves it now.

Mark Nichol