The Vel Satis was launched at the Geneva show in 2001 as a replacement for the Safrane exec which a few of you boomers might remember. At about the same time, Renault launched the ‘one-box’ Avantime, another Patrick le Quément design. Shed was actually at Geneva that year, running a frankfurter/kiss me quick concession around the back of the Renault stand. He will never forget going up to the Avantime show car and gasping in amazement at the enormity of the two doors. The gasping got worse when he tried to close the one he had just foolishly opened as the hinges were already drooping under the strain.
The Avantime played a big part in killing off Matra who, after just two years into production, realised that they had very much picked up the ordure-y end of the stick by agreeing to develop and build it. Which was a shame because it looked refreshingly different. The Vel Satis just looked different. These days we’re used to production cars looking reasonably similar to the concepts that came out two or three years earlier, but the Vel Satis didn’t. The concept was genuinely gorgeous. Who knows what happened there.
The VelocitySatisfaction was far from radical. Underneath it was more or less a Laguna, but that didn’t make it boring. You simply couldn’t look at one without being moved by it in some way, even if that way was to make you think ‘blurrgh’. Some, including Shed, actually like a bit of ugliness. It used to be a USP of French cars, but this fine heritage has been wantonly frittered away in recent years. Obviously, ugliness hasn’t worked for Shed on a marital level, but he takes comfort in knowing that he has the postmistress to fall back on. Or indeed forwards on.
Renault gave the Vel Satis a range of engines from 2.0-litre petrol and 2.2 diesel fours to a 3.5 V6 petrol. There was also, as here, a 3.0 V6 DCi diesel with the Garrett-turbocharged 177hp Isuzu DMAX unit and a 5-speed auto gearbox. It wasn’t a classic unit by any means, either here or in Saab’s 9-5, but it did chug out 258lb ft at 1,800rpm and would take the VS to 130mph if you pushed it. If you didn’t, which was preferable, the official combined fuel consumption figure was 32.5mpg.
As with the vehicle tax which we’ll get onto in a minute, Shed always gets car specs wrong. He did so the last time we had one of these on here, when he claimed that the Initiale was the mid-spec Vl Satis and the Privilege was the top spec, when of course what he meant to say was the exact opposite of that, with the Expression as the third, poverty spec, model. Initiales had electric heated front seats, sat nav, parking sensors, maple wood inserts and leather. Most of that stuff appeared on the Privilege option list, with the exception (Shed thinks, again probably wrongly) of sat nav, which was tres expensive back then. Nowadays of course finding a fuzzy, laggy, outdated factory sat nav in your Vel Satis would be an unwelcome sight.
Parking sensors don’t appear to have saved this particular car’s nearside front panel from a scrape but it seems in very nice shape otherwise. As an October ’04 specimen, it will be one of the last pre-2005 facelift examples to have been brought into the UK. That makes it one of the last UK VSs full stop because after looking at the car’s glum sales figures for the previous couple of years Renault UK decided not to bother investing in an RHD version of the facelift. Globally, Renault persevered with the Vel Satis for another four years before administering the coup de grace in the second half of 2009 having reportedly lost nearly 19,000 euros on each car. They had been hoping for 50,000 sales a year but the reality turned out to be 62,000 sales over the whole eight-year run, many of them to French taxi drivers who liked the generous space on offer.
Our shed came out of last August’s MOT test with zero advisories as it had on the three tests previous to that. The few notes made by MOT testers over the years have centred almost exclusively on simple tyre and suspension wear, suggesting diligent servicing by the (only two) owners. Sure enough, a full service history is confirmed by the vendors. They also quote a price of £2,999 in the ad copy, but the ad headline says £1,850 so that’s the one we’re going with. Coincidentally, the Vel Satis we had on SOTW about a year ago was a two-owner car as well. Seems that once you’ve tried a Vel Satis little else will do. Maybe.
Go on then, Shed dimly hears you cry, what about the tax? Actually, it could be worse. At 232g/km it falls into band K with an asterisk, which is a kind of special band for cars that belch out more than 225g of CO2 every kilometre but which were also registered before 23 March 2006. The result is a tax bill of £415 a year instead of the £710 it would have been for the next band up, or £735 for the top band M. Eventually of course the high tax tide mark will wash over these cars, consigning most if not all of them to the scrap heap.
Talking of watery fates, Patrick le Quément (who is now nearly 80) is still working. He’s currently designing exteriors for Beneteau catamarans. Shed loves a double-hulled vessel with prominent prows and at least one cleat to manhandle but his finances have only ever run to the ancient Mirror dinghy that’s slowly going brown in his yard.
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