Renault Trafic 3

One of the many ways to group notable car models is by how they became important. Some gained such status by excelling on whatever they were intended to do since the release. The others can achieve the same much earlier, but it doesn’t make their feats any less respectable: these are the ones which presented any kind of innovation. Trafic’s thirty years of experience clearly takes it to the first category, but in the latest years it started to do a great job with a typical question of the other one: why commercial automobiles had to be ugly?

Renault’s mid-size van spent twenty years on its first generation, with nothing but a small facelift in 1989. Since this kind of vehicle needs to keep the costs as its top priority, it used to rely on old platforms and the simplest possible designs, in order to be cheap both to buy and to maintain. It was the only way to deal with that situation until the late 1990s, when technology improvements started to migrate towards lower-class cars. The companies found ways to reach very accessible prices with much better products, which is highly important for commercial vehicles just as much it is for the urban branch. Trafic already evolved a lot at its last generation, but given that it debuted in 2001 (with a facelift in 2006), there is much more to do since then.

The exterior follows the automaker’s latest design trend in a great way. Trafic features all the signature elements without anything looking misproportioned. The typical grille became much taller to suit the van’s size, but not so tall as to take the entire space: the lower intake also has a respectable size, but they were separated by a thin strip in body color. The headlights look more aggressive than before and once again dictate the bumper’s shape. These vehicles never innovate too much at the sides to avoid affecting the functionality, which makes the flat roof the biggest feature here: the previous generation had a small cylindrical “bump” above the front windows, in order to give a little more headroom to these passengers. The rear got rid of those black-plastic pillar covers.

There isn’t any information about the interior yet, but it’s expected to receive the same level of improvements in habitability, achieving a more comfortable and pleasant room regardless of the body version and its subsequent use. Speaking of bodies, Trafic will offer two different heights, two different lengths, crew-cab, platform-cab, delivery van and minibus versions and the particular conversions performed by Renault Tech and other approved companies, getting to an astonishing total of 270 variants. The car’s assembly line was taken to the Sandouville plant, which received a €230-million investment for that and became the third French factory to be responsible of Renault’s commercial vehicles: Kangoo is produced in Maubeuge and Master in Batilly.

Last, but definitely not least, Trafic also evolved very much under the hood. If old-school vans used to work with even older diesel engines which were as noisy as pollutant, Renault’s vehicle reaches its third phase as a great example of how far downsizing technologies can go. There will be a Renault-developed, four-cylinder 1.6L unit in two versions: one with one variable-geometry turbo and the Twin-Turbo, which claims to finally beat the 16.7-kpl “threshold”, as the company says. Both use the best Renault can offer in fuel efficiency without taking away a competent performance, expressed through having great torque distribution at low revolutions in order to deliver great accelerations even with full load. The new Trafic will hit the streets in the next few months.