Renault’s Vel Satis luxury car will be aiming at people who ‘want to make a statement’ when it comes on the Irish market in April.

The distinctive, almost-MPV, configuration is designed to carry just four people in absolute luxury. Its high roof and bold slab sideview are just a couple of a number of cues pointing towards Renault designs for the near future in other market segments.

And while the Irish distributors don’t expect to sell in the several thousands numbers enjoyed by key competitors BMW and Mercedes-Benz, they expect enough buyers who want to be different are out there to make its presence on their price lists worth while.

Vel Satis buyers will be quite prepared to be different, and in order that the quality will be quite at the top of the tree, Renault has several times delayed the car’s introduction since its public debut at last year’s Geneva Motor Show.

And, paradoxically, the move by the major image brands towards lower segments of the car market may well have helped pave the way for a mass-market name to once again be a buyable proposition by a highrise executive.

Mercedes-Benz’s A-Class foray is seen by some as a ‘cheapening’ of the brand, and BMW is on the way to producing a smaller car under its own brand names.

“After all, if my neighbour can have a three-pointed star in his driveway for under 22,000 euros, what does that do to the image of my 47,000 euros basic E-Class?” one senior executive commented. “If somebody like Renault can come up with a car that is absolutely luxurious, is distinctive, and they can market it successfully as such at a similar price to my basic Merc, why shouldn’t I consider it?”

He might, too. And considering a Renault, or a big Ford when there was one, or an Omega as many Germans still do who can afford even S-Class Mercs without bother, was in the past something which many Irish higher executives did. The Renault 25, and the R20 before it, were high-level cars which did very nicely when Mercs were only selling a tenth or even less than what they do now.

And there is a school of thought that as the Celtic Tiger matures into a more thoughtful and less flamboyant people, or perhaps has to consider his long-term image as he faces cutting down on his workforce or trimming his management’s expense accounts, that downsizing in brand name without losing real luxury might be a strategic option in perception terms.

There’s no doubt that the ‘image’ brands have done a seriously good job in Ireland in expanding their customer base over the last five years. For instance, the Mercedes-Benz price list alone now has more than 220 offerings, from 21,555 euros to 181,103 euros, giving it probably the widest ‘bandwidth’ in price terms of any other brand available in Ireland.

But while other key players in the segment - Jaguar, M-B, BMW and Lexus - have all enhanced comfortably their sales in recent years and are likely to retain their shares even in a declining overall market, there are others snapping at their heels in determined repositioning strategies by some more mass-market brands.

At the extreme end, formerly ‘people’s car’ cheerleader Volkswagen has successfully chased up the ‘youth speed’ market with some high performance derivatives, and is now setting sights on the luxury segment with its upcoming Phaeton, having primed the blowtorch with its W8-engined ‘super-Passat’.

And while Audi with its A8 has not been especially visible up there in the rarifieds, it is successfully targeting lower-end ‘Beemers’ with its much-upgraded new A4 model. And C-Class Mercedes must also be feeling the warm draught from an accelerating A4 tailpipe.

Ford has no plans to bring back a ‘big car’ beyond some high-specced versions of the Mondeo, but is instead very successfully placing its Volvos into the price and image consciousness as ‘elite brand’ cars. And their quality right to be there is certainly not in question.

There’s also a problem for the ‘image’ brands in that technology transfer now goes downstream much more quickly than in the past. While it took more than two decades for disc brakes to make their way from Jaguar racing cars to D-segment family cars, and not a lot quicker for ABS to become commonplace in C-segment vehicles, such things as automatic wipers and automatic lights illumination have gone from Lexus LS400 level to standard Fiat Stilos in just a few years.

Using the Stilo example again, though not yet available in this country because of local infrastructural deficiencies, Fiat’s CONNECT interactive communication and information system, available in the Stilo across Europe, is at least as competitive and possibly superior to similar systems only available in the US in luxury brands like GM’s Cadillac.

In an era when there’s very little left to differentiate between what cars at different class levels can provide, and with perhaps only a leather option to make a tactile attraction to the image-conscious, there’s an arguable case that the car, in developed economies, is becoming like the refrigerator, a ‘white goods’ product which depends on a very narrow band of attributes to capture any given customer.

Taken to its logical conclusion, we’ll all be buying cars purely on the basis of what they can hold. Something like the equivalent designation of ‘stars’ for how long you can keep a food product frozen.

I don’t want that. I’m interested in cars because they are among the things in this life about which I can still be passionate. And so, I’m waiting with interest for the Vel Satis.

Which I expect, it being French, WILL be passion-engendering. For the buyers of luxury and those who aspire to that.

Don’t disappoint me.

©2002brianbyrne/IrishCar.Com

(Brian Byrne is editorial director of IrishCar.Com)