The baddest
minivan in the
world. Sorry,
cbustapeck -- while the
1994 Dodge Grand Caravan SE Sport AWD is a card-carrying
bad-ass of a
van, the
Renault Espace F1 surely puts it to
shame -- though, the
French-built
van will probably never exist as anything more than a
concept car. Oh well...
The F1, first unveiled at the 1994 Paris Motor Show and later at the 1995 Geneva Motor Show, is a joint effort between Manta (the original designers of the first Espace), Williams (builds Formula One engines) and Renault (the French automaker who sells the van). The standard Espace models are simple city drivers, the strongest of the breed turning 150 horsepower -- why Renault would choose to make a blazingly fast "muscle van", of all things, is beyond me. As it stands, the F1 moniker is well-earned: the Espace F1 uses a mid-mounted, Williams-built RS4 3.5-liter Grand Prix V10, using a whopping 40 valves. The 804 horsepower (yes, 804!) propels the rather plain-looking vehicle from 0-100 km/h (about 62 mph) in 2.8 seconds, and from 0-200 (~124 mph) in a truly insane 6.9 seconds. It apparently brakes as well as it accelerates -- a Manta engineer claims the F1 can go from 0-270 km/h (167.7 mph) and back down to 0 in just 600 meters -- that's a little under four-tenths of a mile (1968 feet). Jumping Jesus on a pogo stick.
And for all that's worth, it performs just as well as a plain old minivan as it does as a speed demon. Obviously, Renault has no plans to release the Espace F1 as a production vehicle, so its usefulness, if any, is a moot point.