Being a French ‘van, you would expect the Pilote to have lots of style, but would that only be skin deep? In fact, a good number of what we had first thought of as styling points turned out to be well-designed, useful features.

The construction was typical of this — beneath the attractive GRP body shell, there’s an aluminium alloy, Duralinox body skeleton, similar to that used in Pilote sister brand Le Voyageur’s super-luxury A-class.