… Renault Kadjar 1.5 dCi 110 Dynamique S Nav …
Looks are always a very personal thing. One man’s example of automotive art is another’s skip on wheels. Or to put it another way, car designers can make their cars appealing to some of the people some of the time, but not all of the people all of the time. A difficult call, but at the end of the day, someone in the manufacturing process has got to take the plunge, sign it off and go into production.
On that basis it’s a good job we don’t all buy cars on looks alone, otherwise we would miss some genuine engineering gems – remember the Fiat Multipla? I loved it when I was driving it and using it but parked it round the back where it wouldn’t be seen!
As far as the ‘ugly stakes’ go, the Renault Kadjar comes nowhere close, but I’m still not a fan of the new Renault family nose and radiator grille treatment, but what do I know? Tens of thousands of Renault buyers are already convinced.
What does convince me is the interior and the ride. There’s plenty of room for four inside the car and the front wheel drive machine is entirely capable on the road. Under the bonnet is another example of Renault’s capability, the long-serving 1.5 dCi. The 109 bhp lump may not excite the power mongers, but it pulls well and cruises happily, and that’s what the majority of everyday motorists want.
If that doesn’t excite you, then perhaps the on-board electronics will. I didn’t get anywhere near exploring all the dashboard display options, but it had four different styles of instrument display. Three of them feature different dial and digital display configurations while the fourth is a purely ‘Eco’ offering which purports to show how well or poorly the driver is doing on Acceleration, Gear Change and Anticipation.
I disagreed frequently with the bluidy thing. It was easy enough to get five stars for acceleration and anticipation, but it regularly marked me down for gear changing. The bluidy cheek of the thing. And then when I did get four stars for gear changing it marked me down on anticipation. It’s obvious that the French breed a different type of driver from us Brits. Either that or it was faulty. Easy enough to cure, I switched to the other display mode with the big rev counter!
The ‘Eco’ display did have another trick up its sleeve though. At the end of the test period during which time I covered 467.2 miles, it revealed that I had apparently travelled 52 miles using no fuel at all. That may have accounted for my trip average of around 60 mpg, which is still some way from Renault’s ‘official’ Euro figure of 72 mpg, but I still that was pretty good.
But it was on the road home from Inverness late at night that convinced me that the Kadjar is an entirely likeable car. There were two stretches of the A9 which suffered near white-out conditions, one just before reaching Aviemore, where it cleared so I pressed on, and another at Dalwhinnie. Although I could still see the road-edge kerbs, the snow was falling quite heavily and it was only a matter of time before the snowgates would be closed.
The only concern I had were the low profile tyres on the 19 inch rims. The people who choose to fit these to increase the ‘kerb-side appeal’ of such vehicles should be made to drive them in snowy and slippery conditions in order to see the error of their ways. Or maybe they are just trying to increase the sale of spare sets of rims with sensible tyres to those of their customers who live outwith the urban jungle.
Whatever, the Kadjar just kept trucking on. At times like that you appreciate steering feel. Speeds were slow because of the reflective glare from the headlights and falling snow, but there was no need for a death-grip on the steering wheel rim. A light touch maintained steady and steadfast progress.
From Dalwhinnie to Perth and beyond the roads were clear and I really enjoyed the rest of the cold, dark, starlit drive home, accompanied by Stephen Nolan on Radio 5 Live arguing with his callers.
There was however, one other important design feature worthy of mention. The boot floor has no rear lip. The floor level is flush with the bumper, so when you are sitting inside the rear with the tailgate up in the rain, your legs don’t go numb like they do on loo-seats!
So there I was sitting on the tailgate at Dingwall Auction Mart, watching rally cars come and go, swinging my legs, with a steaming cup of tea in one hand and a roll and sausage with tattie scone and brown sauce in the other. Life doesn’t get much better than this. And you know what, the Kadjar started to look a whole lot better.
Would I have one? Yup, I would, it has charm and capability, even if I’m still not convinced by its looks.