Chop-top Renault is a family hot-rod

Chopping the top off a car is a skill and a tradition that dates back to 1950s California.

Back then, helped by the sheer mass of army-surplus aluminium then pouring into scrapyards, teenagers and college kids would buy cheap 1930s family cars — Ford Model A’s were the most popular choice — and lop the roof off, fitting lower-slung bodywork to create a sexy hot-rod.

History tends to run in circles, because thanks to BMW starting the trend, with the original X6, that same idea has now come back around again. Take a tall, practical, family SUV and lop the roof by several inches to create something more desirable. With the big German brands so keen on doing just that to their premium-priced SUVs, Renault has now brought the concept to the family car market with this — the new Arkana.

Don’t go assuming that it’s a Kadjar with a haircut, though. It may look like just that, but actually the Arkana uses a more up-to-date chassis than the Kadjar (would you believe us if we told you it was actually closely related to a much smaller Clio, underneath?) and that means it gets a more cutting-edge engine lineup.

You can have a full-on, Toyota-style hybrid based around the 1.6 litre petrol engine (as used by the smaller Captur) or you can have this — a 1.3 litre turbo petrol four-cylinder engine with mild-hybrid (Renault calls it ‘micro-hybrid’) assistance.

That uses a beefed-up 12 volt system to run the stop-start system longer and harder in traffic, helping to save fuel, and which can add a bit of extra electric power and torque to the engine for hard acceleration.

As a package, it’s obviously a bit silly — any SUV claiming to be a coupe is, by definition, slightly daft — but the Arkana is good to drive (weighty steering, excellent ride quality), has a really nice cabin (it feels like a significant step on from the Kadjar in interior terms), and is decently frugal in daily driving (although the seven-speed automatic gearbox lets the engine get a bit too noisy when you ask for full acceleration).

It’s not even impractical. Okay, so the chopped-off roofline at the back means it’s not quite as good at swallowing IKEA loads as the older Kadjar, but that’s still a 513 litre boot out the back, and leg and head-room in the back seats are both more than adequate.

So while it might be a bit of a silly idea, in general, to take an SUV and make it less practical, the fact is that the Arkana is at the end of a long line of tradition, stretching back to the sun-baked roads of 1950s California.

Which I guess adds just a splash of glamour as you wait in the rain-lashed queue for the Jack Lynch tunnel again.