I was nevertheless looking forward to getting my latest long-termer to see how I’d go living with a French filly. Perhaps I was scarred by having raced a French car – ah, yes, the mighty Renault 12 – but that’s another story. Also some of the most effective, from the incomparable Citroen 2CV to Peugeot’s iconic 205 GTi hot hatch. The French have an admirable outlook on life, an effortless elegance, a love of food and drink, a beautiful language and a remarkable creativity that is reflected in their architecture and movies.īut my love of things French has never extended to cars, even though that creativity has produced some of the most elegant designs in history, such as the Citroen DS. Could such a pipsqueak engine really be all about “thrummy goodness”? Sure, I’d read and listened to the ravings of Ponch and Byron about their beloved turbo triples, but it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been out of step with some of my colleagues over trends in motoring. So it was with some trepidation that I approached my new long-termer, Renault’s frankly girl-friendly Captur mini-SUV with its 898cc triple, even though it does boast a turbocharger just like Porsche’s even mightier 917 Can-Am cars that revolutionised racing in the early 1970s. It was certainly more boy than man, and not so mighty. And my abiding memory of that car – other than the fact it was incredibly impractical for a ute and incapable of carrying anything more than an attache case and a toothbrush – was that, while it sounded like a mighty flat-10 Porsche 917 hammering down the Mulsanne at Le Mans in 1970 as you snapped through the gears, it performed more like a strangled Beetle towing a horse float. My one and only previous experience of a three-cylinder car was the rather obscure and curiously named Suzuki Mighty Boy back in the 1980s.

Nuevo renault captur 2015