CAR OF THE YEAR TOP 50

No. 06: Renault Mégane Scénic

Cars

| 09-01-2022

The best-scoring monospace and also the best-scoring Renault in this Top 50 was of unprecedented importance to the brand. The Mégane Scénic was a bull's eye: sales exceeded everyone's expectations. In the seven years that the model was in production, an average of about 1,095 were built per day; that number was just under 2,500 per day at its peak. This success brought in so much money for Renault that they were able to buy a significant share of Nissan and so the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance was born. The man responsible for the design of the Mégane Scénic, Patrick Le Quément, later indicated that he found the front-end design 'horribly fussy'. That front-end changed considerably in 1999, with an extensive facelift, at which the "Mégane" in the name was also dropped.