And that is what I assumed was coming in the shape of the Renault Laguna 'Sport Tourer' – or 'estate' to you and me.

I decided I was going to set up something of an assault course for it – or in today's terms, a business trip.

A bootful of gubbins, from suits to laptops, a tankful of diesel to feed its 2-litre oil burning powerplant and destination pumped into the in-built Satnav.

My journey was to take me up to Leeds before going across to Preston in a motorway slog any paint sales rep would be proud of.

I wanted to see how this so called Sport Tourer, well, toured.

I also knew that the final leg of the trip would bring me over one of the pennine passes – in this case, the Woodhead Pass.

I chose this stretch because I previously enjoyed one of the best driving experiences I've ever had on this stretch of road. It was in my very own BMW 328Ci – a 200bhp piece of automotive perfection.

One of the reasons I'm harping back to this heady memory is the interior of the Laguna. It doesn't belong in a Renault estate. It belongs in a 328Ci.

Seriously. The combination of plastics, leather, hand stitching and brushed silver trim, especially on the dashboard, created an uncanny resemblance and made me feel quite posh actually.

Add to that the new-found solidity that Renault is squeezing into its cars these days and suddenly you have a package that you know is safe and reliable.

For instance. My old mum always reviews cars in the same way. She slams the door like she's borrowed her arms from Geoff Capes and if the window doesn't violently implode all over the remaining passengers, it gets her nod of approval.

But on this occasion, she was so impressed by the muffled 'thud' as the door sealed, she opened it and closed it again: "Oooooh that sounds nice."

High praise indeed, I can assure you.

It's also 'nice' to be able to cover 250 miles and see the fuel needle drop by no more than half. Had I been in the aforementioned BMW I would have been forking out left, right and centre.

But no such problems here. Despite its sporty aspirations and twin exhaust outlet, I returned a healthy 42mpg and I wasn't driving like a saint either. I wanted to push the Laguna and did so with gusto.

The one thing that did become annoying was the initial flat spot in the rev-range that comes with the black pump brigade.

For the majority of the time the 150 horse powers are sprightly and energetic but on more than one occasion I managed to get myself stranded in no man's land in a kind of power vortex that left me a sitting duck for Polish lorry drivers to squish on their way to drop off a raft of screwdrivers.

Although, had your Polish lorry driver crashed, we could have picked up his cargo, crammed it into the carvernous Laguna load space and his bosses would have been none the wiser.

And with a 0–60mph time of under 10 seconds and a top speed of 131mph, we'd have arrived in good time too.