There are some cars whose names alone present a serious obstacle to the potential buyer. The Suzuki Cappucino was one such. Even if it hadn't pre-dated the coffee revolution on Britain's high streets by about five years, and even if it hadn't been built with all the durability of a polystyrene cup, the Cappucino would have suffered from its largely unhelpful associations with frothiness. Suzuki Espresso one could just about have swallowed. But Cappucino? Do you want chocolate on top of that?
The Renault Kangoo, similarly, is a car whose name takes a bit of getting round. What was Renault thinking of when it christened the Kangoo? What kind of focus-group fiasco resulted in a car being given a name ending in goo? I've got an uncomfortable feeling it's a play on the phrase "can do", to denote this family-friendly van's flexible willingness as an errand-runner. It's just as likely, though, to be a meaningless jingle that sounds vaguely amusing if you happen to be French. Either way, Kangoo isn't a name for a car, it's a piece of baby talk - a child's first stab at saying kangaroo. Try saying, "Hey, let me run you up there in the Kangoo" while retaining any kind of personal dignity.
It's not clear whether adding the secondary name Trekka (it denotes the new, still pluckier, four-wheel-drive version) lessens the problem. But beyond the labelling, it's a strikingly plain and simple piece of engineering - in stark contrast to Renault's other contemporary products, many of which appear to have been designed in honour of the more elaborate kinds of gas barbecue. Red Kangoos look as if they automatically play the theme from Postman Pat. Mine was silver, but even then one couldn't escape the feeling that it owed its life at some level to animated puppetry.
One has been here before with the Citroën Berlingo, the Kangoo's fiercest competitor in the adapted-bread-van category, and also, not uncoincidentally, its major rival for the coveted title of ugliest car on the road. I'd say the Berlingo just about shades it in the latter contest, with the Mercedes Vaneo coming up hard on the rails, but it's touch and go.
Who are you if you're in the market for a four-wheel-drive Kangoo? Well, the chances are you're not an automotive thrill-seeker with string-backed driving gloves at the ready. Rather, you're up for some square-edged functionality at a daft price. Perhaps you run a two-man painting and decorating company, or a landscape gardening consultancy that requires you occasionally to shift shrubs. Or perhaps you simply have an extremely messy and unusually tall family.
In any of those contexts, the Kangoo will do you proud. The rear doors slide a little effortfully, but it majors, above all, in headroom. You'll have no problem spotting it across a crowded car park, because it stands up like a tower block on an estate of bungalows. On the underside of the roof along each side stretches a row of overhead storage cabins in hardy plastic, making the interior something of a cross between a mobile workshop and a Monarch Airlines 727.
You could get almost anything in those overhead bins: CDs, maps, bottles, a selection of hot and cold snacks and even, at a pinch, one or two of your smaller relatives - and that's before you start occupying the echoingly capacious boot space, which is only slightly narrower than Birmingham and can be covered over from inside with a handy, multi-hinged folding top, the better to conceal your paints/shrubs/family pet from unwelcome prying eyes.
The overhead lockers stop short of where the driver sits, which means there is a disconcertingly large volume of air between you and the roof. An ejector seat would probably start losing height before you cracked your head on the ceiling.
As a result of all this interior air, possibly only a housebrick is less aerodynamic than the Kangoo. On the motorway, at 70mph, the wind pressed against the windows to create an interesting symphony of whistles. What with that and the brave straining of the engine, you could hardly hear your children preventing you from thinking.
It's a van, so you have to give the gearstick some elbow and work with the steering wheel a bit. And like all vans, it was happier when generating momentum than it was when losing that momentum under brakes. Still, over the hot weekend just passed, I loaded my Kangoo with a picnic, a range of beach paraphernalia and four other family members including an 85-year-old wheelchair user, who would eventually rate the Kangoo highly for ride comfort and legroom.
That's all credit to the Kangoo's ultimately winning nature, because this person had no prior reason to be well disposed towards it. Getting the wheelchair in was a doddle; its user was a far tougher logistical project, during which it emerged that the Kangoo has nothing above the top edge of the door on the inside to get a grip on. In the end, while someone outside the car pushed, I went round to the driver's side and pulled. It was a mentally distressing and physically depleting experience. And I don't suppose it was so great for the 85-year-old, either. Yet, despite all that, we were all talking highly of the Kangoo Trekka at the end of the day. While avoiding using its name, of course.
