Bolly knickers and Hunt not in a Laguna

Overweight, over-the-hill, nicotine-stained, borderline-alcoholic, homophobe DCI Gene Hunt, is back.
Ashes to Ashes, will send a tsunami of nostalgia washing through the nation’s living rooms. Nothing quite prompts gushing, blind, remember the good old days sentimentality like cars.

In Hunt’s last manifestation in Life on Mars as the sort of copper your mum and dad miss as much as Blue Bols and Tupperware parties, he was driving around Camberwick Green in a Mk III Cortina. Which soon had people lamenting the passing of cars you really could rely on.
That is to say, rely on not to start in the morning, not to stop without a ship’s anchor, cars which needed trauma counselling at every corner.
Why do we mourn cars like dead pets which were about as much use as the Japanese work ethic during the three day week? If they were so good we would have sacked all the men with slide rules and HB pencils and lived for ever in the land of the leaky Marina.
The quattro was among the first cars not designed by men in warehouse coats enjoying a Condor moment. It has already spawned a colloquial useage of Hunt’s catch phrase ‘time to fire up the quattro, Raymondo.’
Nostalgically, I can tell you I remember the press launch. In Dorking. And that Audi only ever spelt quattro lower case.
Impressed? Well, not with Dorking but at the time I owned a Renault 14 and the Audi made a nonsense of where French manufacturers were heading. Which I believe was for a nice game of dominoes. With the British.
Over the years Renault has blown hot and cold. The 16 was revolutionary. It had an electric sunroof and windows and converted into a double bed. Golly. The 14 however, was worse than an absinthe hangover. It was about as desirable as Toulouse Lautrec’s legs.
Conversely the new Renault Laguna, especially the Sport Tourer, has the lines of Emmanuelle
Beart. It is as stylish as the best of its competitors, be they Audis or BMWs, a well balanced, practical gimmick- free family car.
Latest to join the range is the £20,000 2.0-litre dCi 175 which is smooth and refined with 40mpg consumption.
This is the one to go for.
In Dynamic trim there is a six-speed gearbox, part leather upholstery, cruise control, air conditioning, F1 leather steering wheel and directional headlights. In the Initiale there are wood inserts that will have you yearning for G-Plan.
This is also an exceptionally well protected car, six air bags and ESP as well as the regular, if bigger, Renault key-card and push button start. Safer? well yes, you can’t smash your knee on the key in a shunt.
On then, to the jolly old tar macadam. Performance is above average for the baby seat and Labrador sector. 62mph comes up in 8.9 seconds and mid range power is an excellent get out of jail card.
Initially words like loose-limbed and relaxed spring to mind but then after leaving the motorway our B for bum-roads expose a hard ride.
In all though, undramatic handling and a pleasing drive.
Of course you bought the Sport Tourer for its space and there is plenty of it, even if the sloping roof cuts capacity somewhat. On the other hand Bretton caps off to the guy who designed what must be the simplest folding seats on the market.
I don’t know what people will think of the latest Laguna 27 years from now. What I would point out is how difficult it would have been to put DCI Hunt in a suitably action packed 1981 vintage French car.
Which is why inspector Clouseau
drove a 2CV.

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