One did not turn up, another stuttered to a halt, so then there were only five 2024 Car of the Year-shortlisted contenders at the all-important Silverstone test drive last week at which the six UK jurors confirmed their final rankings.
In the car design industry, gender inequality has dominated the industry for many years. From Henry Ford to Elon Musk, the big shots are all men, so you might
Renault stole a march with the first Scenic. You’d have thought that the rest of the car industry would have taken a bit more notice when, in 1991, the French brand showed up with the Safety Concept Embodied in a New Innovative Car (Scenic – get it?), but it didn’t. And when the production version, designed by a team under Anne Asensio, broke cover in 1996, she might as well have walked around with a pair of dressmaker’s scissors cutting the belts of all the rivals, such was their state of trous