A few days ago, when I posted some cars from Matra, @robtherunt asked about the company’s Murena sports car. I managed to dig up these photos of a vivid orange example from Techno Classica 2013. The Murena, like the Bagheera before it, was famous for its three-abreast seating. Matra stopped selling the Murena in 1984 when it started making the Espace for Renault. This was good business but left Matra more reliant on its relationship with Renault.

Today we jump forward in the Matra story to the 2001 Renault Avantime, seen here at the recent Practical Classics resto show. This was a sort of two-door coupé/hatch grand tourer which was in retrospect aimed at the same ‘French luxury’ niche as today’s DS models. It was quite unlike anything else, and car buyers didn’t really get it. Sales were low. Which of course means that it was loved - even revered - by later generations of car geeks (1/3)

Yesterday I posted the Simca 1100 pick-up (beige vehicle). In one of the greatest automotive transformations ever, Matra turned this rather basic, dated-looking vehicle into one of the most arrestingly stylish mainstream cars of the late 1970s, the Talbot Matra Rancho.This one is in need of a bit of restoration - which is why it was at the recent Practical Classics resto show near Birmingham. (1/2)

Today, after Projet 900, another milestone on Renault’s journey towards a new practical vehicle type, in the form of the 1981 Matra P18 prototype, displayed here at #Retromobile Paris in 2014. Peugeot, the new parent of Matra’s original partner in the project, Chrysler Europe, decided not to proceed with production, and the P18 instead went to Renault, where it became the Espace. If only Talbot had been able to sell this instead of the Tagora.