Renault Megane Sport Tourer dCi 110 2017 first drive

As a general rule of thumb, style sells. From tables to toasters, eggcups to estate cars and anything else you care to think of, if something looks good, people will probably buy it before something that looks ugly or just plain boring.

In car terms, the stylish option at the moment is, of course, the SUV. Handily, these do a good job of making you look good to a decent chunk of the population whilst also having room for snowboards, surfing gear or (more realistically) the needs of a family.

With that in mind, the traditional estate has to try harder than ever to appeal. That brings us to the Renault Mégane Sport Tourer, here in frugal 1.5 dCi 110 guise. We’ve already had a go in the more potent 1.6-litre diesel, but how does a longer spell in the lesser oil-burner pan out?

Compared with the old load-lugging Mégane, the latest version sits lower and wider to emphasise the Sport aspect of its name. The trouble is that in doing so, Renault has reduced boot capacity so it’s now a little less than an Astra Sports Tourer and significantly worse than a long-roof Octavia. That’s not to say it isn’t practical - there are nice touches like handles to fold the rear seats in the boot, an adjustable load floor and the usual array of optional cargo restraints to make securing a variety of loads easy. It’s also good to see no step up from the boot floor to the rear seats when they’re folded, all the better to load up on flatpack furniture.

Rear seat space isn’t bad assuming you’re not too tall. Leg room isn’t bad at all for the class, but head room is limited by that lowered roof line. As for the front, there’s ample room and the seats are nice and comfy. Although we liked the return of velour, the faux leather felt very plasticky. Our test car came with Renault’s 8.7in portrait orientated touchscreen infotainment system. It certainly has plenty of functionality but we found the menus to be more confusing than they needed to be with many icons that were too small to hit accurately.

As for quality, there’s plenty of soft-touch plastic and of course the luxuriant feel of velour beneath you. The trouble is that there’s an awful lot of unattractive satin finish plastic, especially around the infotainment screen that makes the interior feel a bit cheap overall.