Renault 4 - long-term review

The car industry is always getting its knuckles rapped for some grimy dealing or other. The latest being of course the 'discretionary commission arrangements' scandal on car loans. Anyone who's visited the gents' urinals (and I assume the ladies' cubicles if there's any equality in the world but clearly I haven't checked) will know that billions are likely to be paid in compensation.

Maybe it's time the financial authorities looked at paint prices. Normally there's an option price on metallic, which we all assumed was actually more expensive to manufacture or apply. But recently it looks like the manufacturers just pick any colour and slap a random surcharge on it. And so the Renault 4, in mid-'70s suburban bathroom pastel blue non-metallic, is £750 more expensive than one in metallic ruby. Me neither. But it's the sole optional extra here.

Still I like the blue and I like the look of the R4, but maybe that's because I'm old enough to have once rented an original and driven from Marrakech across the Atlas. There was also one in the family when I was a kid. Maybe if you don't have that history this new one won't have the emotional resonance. In which case it'll just be a nicely trimmed electric crossoverette.

Really very nicely trimmed in the case of this top-spec Iconic+ version (the + just means it has a French battery and is eligible for the upper tier of grant). Plein Sud means the big fabric roof, which opens all the way over the rear seat. Perhaps we should call that an optional extra? It costs £1,500, and loses roof bars.

For non-motorway driving in the summer that roof has been a very pleasant extra. It doesn't seem to cause any extra noise at 70mph versus a steel roof when it's shut. That's not to say the car is silent; I went from London to Cornwall on a very breezy day and headlong into the south-westerlies there's a bit of roar from around the driver's window. I kept checking it was closed.

That was a four-up trip with baggage and we got stuck in bank holiday traffic. By the time we got to the charge stop the people in the back were complaining. The 4 is bigger than the R5, but still not roomy back there. It has a good boot though.

To drive, it's more placid than the 5, but still good fun. My first trip in the 4 had been to meet a Kia EV2, a close match in price and position. Thumbnail twin-test verdict: the Kia's ride is floatier but not actually any better over the coarse bumps that tire you out, and it's less fun to steer than the 4, and its motor is emphatically less spry. So yeah, I'm really liking the 4.

Its economy isn't bad. Warm weather and all that, but the worst was into the headwind after the traffic had cleared and I was driving at, ahem, autoroute speed. That was 2.8m/kWh. Normal motorway in still air is 3.6m/kWh, for 185 miles' range. General biffing around gets better than 4m/kWh. Use the inbuilt maps and range prediction is uncommmonly perspicacious.

A 10-80 per cent charge is taking me just over half an hour – not the best given that's adding just two more hours of 70mph driving, but at least you don't need to look for a 350kW charger as the peak ingestion rate is about 100kW. And as I say, the passengers are glad to stretch their legs. Backhanded compliment to the Renault, then.