Matra’s forgotten three-seat sportscar was at Breakfast Club

This Matra Murena arrived at the most recent Goodwood Breakfast Club to fly the flag for obscure three-seat French cars. It was the successor to the longer-lived Bagheera which was produced between 1973 and ’80. For a short time, the earlier was officially offered for sale in the UK despite being available in what’s probably the most extreme form of left-hand-drive possible. During that run, the Romorantin-Lanthenay factory built 47,802 of them, and most remained on the Continent.

The Murena addressed some of its predecessor’s shortcomings. For one thing, the Bagheera had a rust-prone chassis. Not so for the Murena thanks to its galvanised finish. Allied to the composite bodywork, it meant that the Murena owner had few worries about corrosion. Only the rear suspension arms were susceptible. The newer car also had more power than the Bagheera and came with a five-speed gearbox.

Styling was broadly similar, the update penned by Antonis Volanis who had been responsible for the Bagheera’s interior. He also headed the design of the Rancho, a car that arguably foretold the cross-over genre way ahead of time. In the tradition of so many low-volume car-makers, he plundered the parts bin for lighting and other details. The same went for the mechanical components, the choice of 1.6- or 2.2-litre four-cylinder engines being borrowed from Talbot while the transaxle came from the Citroën CX.

None of this mattered to the Murena driver, though, as the car proved to add up to more than the sum of its parts. The fabled motoring writer LJK Setright deemed it the match of a Lancia Monte Carlo and better than a basic Porsche 924. He described the suspension as being so good that the car “need never be driven slowly.” For pace, you’d be best off with the Murena S which took the larger 2.2-litre engine and added the Préparation 142 package which brought with it twin carburettors for 142PS (104kW). 

Unlike the Bagheera, the Murena was never officially sold in the UK but there was a company that planned to offer cars converted to right-hand-drive. It’s believed that only around five cars received the treatment, so your chances of finding one today are slim. And the Murena proved much shorter lived than the car that came before. There were 18,680 built from 1980 to ’83. 

The triple-seater was put out to pasture when Matra formed an alliance with Renault. The larger company took on the P18 ‘monobox’, which evolved into the Espace, but the deal meant that Matra’s sportscar manufacture had to stop as it was competition for La Regie’s own A310. That was a sorry situation for a company with such motorsport pedigree.

The two companies continued to work together for a couple of decades, but things hit the buffers after the ill-fated Matra-built Avantime caused financial troubles that proved impossible to recover from.

Although the Murena was outlived in the showroom by the Rancho, it was the final new road car design by Matra. It couldn’t be more gallic nor more of its time. It’s a charming reminder of a time when designers had great freedom to defy convention, and nobody did that better than the French.

Photography by Joe Harding.