Renault Is Going Retro With Its Vans, Too

Renault has been charming us lately with its range of delightful retro-styled electric cars, bringing back the 4 and 5 and returning the Twingo to its bug-eyed roots. Seemingly swayed by the hugely positive response these cars have received, Renault’s also flicking through its back catalogue of names for its upcoming range of electric vans.

Now, we don’t know a whole lot about vans, but apparently, they’re a bit like cars, only better at carrying stuff. The one that has us most interested is the Estafette, the one that’s strangely cute with its skinny track, high roof and massive windscreen.

Under two metres wide but 2.6 metres tall, it’s designed for inner-city deliveries, and revives a name used for an equally tall, skinny van built in various places from 1959 until 1986. It’s sort of like a French version of the classic VW T1 Transporter.

Another name from Renault’s past is the Goelette, originally used on another van sold from 1959 until 1965. Of these modern vans, it’s the one that looks like it has a shipping container stuck on the back. That’s one of three initial configurations, along with a tipper and a bare chassis cab, that it’ll be offered in, with scope for pretty much any other fitting back there. In other words, it’s the one you’re going to see being driven around while dangerously overloaded with unsecured scrap metal.

Then there’s the one that just looks… like a van. That’s the Trafic, a name Renault first introduced in 1980 and still uses today. It’s effectively its equivalent of the Ford Transit and VW Transporter. It’s probably the least interesting of the three, but apparently it does have the same turning circle as a Clio, which sounds impressive.

These aren’t quite the final production versions yet, but they look similar to a range of production vans that’ll begin arriving next year, and will be built in France. They’re all built on a platform from Flexis, a new commercial EV specialist that’s a result of a tie-up between Renault, Volvo and shipping company CMA CGM. Expect to see them decked out in the liveries of Amazon Prime, Highways England or with the email address of a local cash-in-hand plumber before you know it.