There stood an old Renault Kangoo, tall, narrow and clumsy. So from another time, so purely built for use. Not to look at, I used to think. Now I fall head over heels for it. It grows on you. How charming, how endearing, how historic.
“Left-wing cars don’t really exist anymore”, my fellow hiker expressed my feelings. Left would be an incomplete characterization. The Kangoo profile is incomplete without the qualifications friendly, modest and sober – not coincidentally all words from another time. Today we see ourselves as sporty, exuberant, emotional, dynamic. We also expect these qualities from our cars, so they look quite different from then. No longer sweet but tough and menacing, many and full. bold statements, say the designers in their twisted turbo language.
Anyway, that Kangoo could never be a VVD bin. As stigmatizing as it sounds, it was indeed a car for people from the alternative corner. Hobbits who care about status and appearance, with functional needs and a slightly unruly lifestyle. PvdA voting schoolmasters, yoga instructors, wild campers, young artists with a high sympathy factor and/or a dog.
They couldn’t drive in German. Because come on, German was for the adapted bourgeoisie. Light metal? You didn’t even know what it was. And space was much more important than power. With such a mental map you could buy three cars. The Berlingo, the Fiat Doblò or the Kangoo.
Where has the Kangoo rider gone? Well, it’s dying out. Incidentally, you can still see a friendly elderly gentleman with a snow-white beard in front of a museum or garden center stepping out of his bold MPV. Then you know two things for sure; he is the first owner and he keeps his Kangoo until it falls through his hooves. He will never find such a practical car again. He takes the culture of noble modesty crushed by the self-era to his grave. The compact passenger van turned out to be a dead end.
The Berlingo is still there. Don’t ask how. He has become too big and too bulky. Moreover, Stellantis now also sells it with Opel logo as the new Combo – deadly objection to the Francophile who is the Kangoo human by nature. Only the order versions of the Doblò and the Kangoo are available here. The last old-style Kangoo drivers can move to Dacia for a Dokker or Lodgy, but then it stops. The younger ex-Kangoo driver with a decent income has switched to a Tesla, the non-retirement Kangoo bad luck to a theoretically less unreliable VW Caddy in revenge.
So there it is, a forgotten souvenir from other, better times. Who remembers how genius he was? Four meters long, not 1100 kilos heavy, 650 liters of luggage space and 2600 with folded rear seats. Simple 14 inch wheels. Simplicity trumps, but in all modesty a transport professional that all those bloated SUVs of today can’t match. Of all the new cars I’ve driven in recent years, not one endeared to me like this one. The sight of that Kangoo made me realize immediately how much I hate many modern cars. They’re like Twitter, with their big mouths.
Give us back the sweet, good, left-hand car. I can’t see twenty inches anymore.