The new Renault Rafale is a comfy, capable family crossover with a genius feature that passengers will love

WE like Renault. Quite a lot, in fact.

Clio, Captur and Scenic are all class-leading or near class-leading, and rebooting the Renault 5 as a £23k EV is a masterstroke.

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But when it comes to producing larger, more expensive, flagship motors, things never seem to add up as sweetly.

Safrane. Vel Satis. Avantime. Remember them? Exactly.

Well, Renault is at it again with this near £50k SUV-cum-crossover called the Rafale E-Tech 4x4 300hp Plug-in Hybrid Atelier Alpine. Catchy, huh?

The cheaper, lower-powered Rafale arrived last summer to somewhat muted applause. So this performance one, or ‘super hybrid’ as Renault likes to call it, is intended to stir the soul, having been tuned by the racy Alpine team.

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Three electric motors combine with the same 1.2-litre 3-cylinder petrol engine (although boosted with a new turbocharger) to deliver around 60 miles of pure EV range and a total output of 300hp.

Plus, it has four-wheel drive with four-wheel steering.

The ride is improved over the base Rafale thanks to a new camera system that reads the road ahead and self-adjusts the generally soft suspension to successfully pre-empt broken roads and speed bumps.

But despite the Alpine chassis tuning, badges and tricolore leather seat stitching, it’s not a performance SUV, even in Sport mode, so much as it’s a comfy and capable, family-friendly crossover.

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Passengers in the back will love the genius foldout stands for all their devices, plus oodles of knee, head and luggage space.

Up front you’re treated to a large, upright, Google-driven infotainment touchscreen that’s highly responsive and pretty intuitive to use.

Less intuitive is the multitude of appendages sprouting out from behind the already heavily buttoned steering wheel. Four stalks are simply too many.

And there is a bank of shortcut buttons, under the screen, to placate those who occasionally need something to physically push.

It’s a handsome thing to look at though, especially in this bespoke matte blue paint with diamond black roof spoiler – only available on this top Atelier Alpine model, albeit for a cool £1,700 premium.

But otherwise it’s hugely spec’d up as standard and you’ll not need to tick any further option boxes to tip you any more over the £50k mark.

Flagship Renault

There are stunning 21in alloys, hands-free parking and boot opening, 12-speaker Harmon Kardon sound system, voice- controlled “opacifying” panoramic glass roof, 360 degree camera and a lovely, intricate 3D grille.

Can this flagship Renault buck the trend and resist becoming a ghost ship like the fancy French executive models before it?

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Plug-in hybrid SUVs are very much the order of the day after all as private buyers hold off switching to pure EV.

But well done Renault for not giving up on the dream of competing with the German upper classes. If you don’t try, you definitely won’t succeed.