We interviewed Richard Flan, the only person to have driven the Z-11 Berlinette concept car! Loyal readers know that the Renault Z11 Berlinette project has a special flavor for LIGNES/auto. After revealing the very first photos in the book “Concept-cars et prototypes d’études Renault” published in 2020, thanks to Patrick le Quément and Jean-Marie Souquet, we subsequently revealed the specifications for this concept car, which was to mark the Berlinette’s return to the Renault range in 2001.
Today, we’re excited to bring you an exclusive feature with new photos of the Z11 from Patrick le Quément’s archives, and an interview with Richard Flan, the technical project manager at the time. It was he who piloted this concept car during two series of shots. The photos were to be included in the press kit for the 2001 Geneva Motor Show, where the sporty coupé was to be unveiled.
The project was brought to an abrupt halt. Patrick le Quément, above, tells the story behind the genesis of this concept car on the “Drivent to write” website, which we highly recommend: https: //driventowrite.com. He has kindly authorized us to publish new, previously unpublished photos of this grey-painted concept car (at the end of this post), which, as we shall discover, is highly accomplished and outperforms most of its competitors at the time.
Richard Flan, now with Ampère (Renault’s electric vehicle design department) was “technical project manager” at the time of the Z11’s genesis (1999-2000) . “I followed all the concept cars of those years and joined the Z11 program right from the start. Together with the team, I prepared all the milestones and schedules for the designers… right up to the moment when the concept car arrived on the show stand.”
It’s worth pointing out right away that Richard is fuelled by fuel and sport, and is as fond of technique as he is of driving. He worked alongside Patrick le Quément, “an exceptional person, I have great respect for him and I was extremely lucky to work with someone like him.“ Richard was totally integrated into the design process. “That was the time when Michel Jardin was supervising the concept-car design team. Of course, I left the creativity to Michel’s team, but I was involved in the reviews at several stages, including the drawings, the four or five 1/5 scale models, and then the final selection stage with Patrick le Quément. Immediately afterwards, I drew up the reference plan. I was working 100% on the design!“
In design, of course, but with a thorough knowledge of technology and architecture! “We had our own studio for concept cars, and the technical team’s work was fascinating and… complex, if only from the point of view of door kinematics, which were a far cry from the more conventional ones in the series! We invented everything on our own models. We were entirely in charge of the chassis, because the concept cars ran, and some of them quite well (including the Z11, as we shall see…) I had a specific workshop and a team of technicians and mechanics, capable of designing unique chassis. We built the Z11 at Sandouville in a dedicated workshop. I also had an engine builder capable of wiring everything up. And then we’d take the functional chassis back to the design department and ship it to one of our service providers. For the Z11, it was G-Studio in Turin“ below.
From the outset, the company considered the possibility of producing a small sports concept to compete with the Lotus Élise. Or, as was finally the case, to develop it in collaboration with the English brand. “At the beginning, we had quite a few discussions about the production product: do we start from a Lotus chassis or do we produce our own?” Part of the company went to work on this theme and then started to get out the calculator. The idea was to send a Lotus chassis to Alpine’s Dieppe plant, where the production “Berlinette” would be built. Everything fell into place, until the day when the company demonstrated that the project was unprofitable. Called the PCS (Petit Coupé Sportif), this abandoned production version differed mainly from the Z11 concept car in the absence of the small, suction-opening rear doors shown below, which gave easier access to the storage space behind the two seats.
It’s worth remembering that the two programs (Z11 concept car and series production with Lotus) were carried out simultaneously. Richard Flan points out, however, that the concept car was not based on the Lotus platform, but on a new chassis. “We did the Z11 on our own, to get it up and running quickly. We couldn’t afford to go back and forth to England, as designers Nicolas Dortindeguey did for the exterior and Pontus Fontaeus for the interior. We operated like a commando unit, because the concept car was due to be presented at the end of 2000. So we built our own aluminum chassis and fitted it with the Clio RS engine of the time.“
Then came the moment when Richard Flan’s team coupled the chassis with the concept car’s “body” at G-Studio. “We delivered the chassis with engine and suspension, and everything worked perfectly. G Studio dressed it up for unveiling at Geneva 2001, even if the notes first evoked the Paris Mondial 2000.” And finally, Louis Schweitzer, head of Renault, halted the project at the very end of 2000… “Yes, the production project stalled quite late, at the same time as the concept car. This was all the more unfortunate as we had innovated on many points with our partners. They had come up with some great innovations, such as our haptic control wheel for selecting the information to be displayed on the screen… and all of a sudden, we were forced to tell them that we weren’t bringing the car out after all.”
But before the Z11 came to a standstill, the concept car took to the road for two photo shoots. And Richard Flan remembers these two very special moments well. How did he feel when he saw the finished concept car? “In the end, it’s hard to express a feeling when the car is finished, because we’ve been following it from the start, and even as a model we’ve been on board almost every day! So when I open the door for the photo shoot, it’s not the first time! I must have opened it a hundred times during the design process!”
Let’s talk dynamics and hit the roads of France! “With the concept car in its first blue hue – above – we headed off to the Creuse region of France to get a typical racetrack feel. Renault’s communications department had rented one for the occasion. We loaded the car onto a truck and took it out on the track. Photographer Patrick Sautelet* was quick to express his doubts, telling us that the car looked fine, but its paintwork in the sun was too flaky and detracted from the quality of his photos.”
*Patrick Sautelet was a brilliant automotive photographer who, in 2008, joined the LIGNES/auto team to found the eponymous print magazine.
“There’s too much glitter in your blue! Nevertheless, we went through with the whole photo shoot to be ready to deliver the documents to the communications department before the Geneva Show. On the track, I extracted the car’s potential quite strongly, and Patrick Sautelet told me that it was too perfect, that it was super efficient, but that as a result, it stayed too flat in the corners, and that on the photos, the dynamic effect wasn’t there! It should have been more supple, so that it could have gained a little support. The impression of speed was absent.”
And when the team returned to the workshop, “we realized Patrick was right. A debate ensued: was it the right idea to present it in blue? And then Isabelle Charles (in charge of colors and materials for the project) told us that she had a great gray in her work that worked well! So we repainted the concept car. The blue car and the grey one are in fact the same vehicle. Eight days after our return, the Z11 was gray, and a fortnight later it was off to the second photo shoot, this time in the Montpellier region.”
Grey or blue, this new “Berlinette” had the same underpinnings. Did it nevertheless benefit from some tuning modifications to make it more supple? “No, we didn’t have time to change the suspension settings. It was running really well, with a robotized sequential gearbox, and as we’d done the dynamic tuning, we didn’t want to touch anything else!” And surprise, this gearbox wasn’t controlled from the steering wheel, because “the product didn’t want paddles, so we had a lever. You have to put that in context: we were at the end of the 1990s.“ Renault introduced its Getrag dual-clutch gearbox in 2010, while Ferrari’s first sequential gearbox (F355) dates back only to 1994.
But the first few laps left their mark on Richard, who remembers driving a car that “ran really well! The first gear was a bit long, given the dynamic capacity of the concept. It was more like a racing gearbox. But after first gear, all of a sudden, it became exceptional and brilliant! It was almost like a turbo effect. A real transformation. We could have changed the 1st gear, but we didn’t have the time.“
“On start-up, the Z11 would start off slowly and then suddenly you’d be flying up the gears with the sequential gearbox: ‘boop…. boop…’. It was like a video game with such a fast gearbox, and you couldn’t lift your foot between gears. Today, it seems normal, but in the early 2000s, nobody drove such a thing! I was driving Gran Turismo!“ So it was a worthy heir to Alpine? “Yes, it was! Absolutely. An aluminum chassis and a 200 hp 2.0 engine. The Berlinette should have been light, but the concept car was inevitably a little heavier than the production model.“
Was the privilege of driving what should have been the Renault that marked Alpine’s revival shared with others? “I think I’m the only one to have driven it! In the team, there’s probably a mechanic who tested it during calibration tests on the Aubevoye track.“ And did Louis Schweitzer drive it? “ No, he didn’t drive it. He made the decision to stop the program…“ And after the program was discontinued, Richard Flan explains that “it was obviously complicated, because I’m addicted to sports cars, and this was really one of them. The Z11 was really something special for me. I was finally getting back into a real sports car.“
“I can’t say anything other than that there was disappointment, but I’d add: measured disappointment, because personally, I went on to work on the Talisman concept car. We’d even started on it, and it was a great job with Stéphane Janin, an exceptional designer. But it wasn’t a very sporty concept, and my red blood cells are diamond-shaped and my whites are tattooed with Renault Sport, so…”
Richard Flan is kind enough to point out that the exterior designer of the Z11 project, Nicolas Dortindeguey, “had a harder time of it than I did, as he was working on the production version, with trips back and forth to England ”. As for Pontus Fontaeus, the Z11’s interior designer, he left Renault after the project was halted. Today, Richard drives for Ampère, but he hasn’t forgotten his many passions at the wheel of his Spider Renault Sport. “Yellow, of course. It’s the benchmark! ” A benchmark that could have been formidably renewed at the start of the third millennium by the “Berlinette”!
LIGNES/auto thanks Patrick le Quément and Richard Flan for their availability.