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Third generation Duster has finally arrived in South Africa, but isn't as clear-cut as its predecessor, with so-so interior quality and sad departure of the 1.5 dCi diesel engine.
New Renault Duster has been a long time coming and, while smart on the outside, isn't as clear-cut as its predecessor. Picture: Mark Jones
I have always had a soft spot for Renault’s Duster. It offered a decent amount of spec, sufficient urge and brilliant fuel consumption from its turbodiesel powerplant, and great all-round value for money.
Therefore, I was looking forward to my drive in the all-new model, but as with everything in life, as time moves on, things change, and not always for the better, and this was my experience with the latest Duster.
I will start with the good and the subjective. I really like the styling of the new Duster. It is somewhat unique in a market of generic Chinese-looking SUVs.
It’s also probably just butch enough with its flared wheel arches, cladding, skid plates, and 217mm ground clearance to be taken seriously as an SUV that can do more than tackle only dirt roads.
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I didn’t. I only did dirt roads, but the guys at the Duster’s media launch were flying up and down sand dunes in the Western Cape to prove how capable the vehicle is when away from the city.
The four-wheel-drive Duster 1.2T Zen you see here offers Renault’s latest Terrain Control system with five modes: Eco, Auto, Snow, Mud/Snow and Off-Road.
It is claimed to have a class-leading optimised approach and departure angles, along with downhill speed control for extra confidence on steep slopes, and off-road driving information, such as lateral tilt, uphill/ downhill pitch, and torque distribution that is displayed on the infotainment touchscreen.
Despite all this, I don’t think you should fool yourself into thinking you are in a Suzuki Jimny. However, the Duster should do way more than the likes of Toyota’s Corolla Cross and Chery’s Tiggo range of vehicles that this new vehicle will most likely find itself competing with on showroom floors.
Where the feel-good feeling started to go downhill, for me, was when I climbed into the Duster and banged my knee on the cupholder moulded into the door panel and hopped around like I had been shot in the leg with a hunting rifle.
Besides making me use some choice language, which was by no means French or Romanian for that matter, it did highlight the substantial amount of hard plastics that can be found on the offending door panels, dash, and elsewhere within this vehicle.
You get the usual large screen, 10.1-inch, infotainment system and a seven-inch digital instrument cluster, which was easy to operate, and that controls all the media functions and offers wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.
But this was the first time I felt that you could feel and see that the Duster was not up to the interior quality that is on offer from the likes of the mentioned Corolla Cross and Tiggo.
It went even further downhill from there, unfortunately, as I was not impressed with the notchy gear shift of the six-speed manual gearbox.
It took a lot of effort to get the shift-to-throttle combination smooth, and nobody who drove the Duster in my house came away with anything good to say about this aspect of the vehicle.
The actual ride quality of the Duster was quite good, and once on boost, the 48-volt mild-hybrid assisted 1.2-litre turbocharged petrol engine was rather peppy with its 96kW/230Nm.
I know for some manufacturers we can’t go back to the dirty dark ages of turbodiesel power, but this model fitted with an auto gearbox would make a world of difference to the drive experience in my opinion.
The elephant in the room remains the old turbodiesel and its fuel efficiency. Although the mild-hybrid spiritual successor comes in with a claimed number of 5.7 L/100 km, this was never on the cards for our test vehicle. At the end of the week, we eventually got it down to 9.2 L/100 km after undertaking two decent open road runs.
You can’t help but feel that this new Renault Duster is not going to be as successful as the old Duster was.
I hope I am wrong and will have to eat my words, but it’s a tough market out there, and this Duster is noticeably more expensive than the previous generation, and it finds itself under far more of a threat from the competition that offer better overall product at a better price, only sans 4WD.
The Duster 1.2T Zen 4WD retails for R549 999 and is backed by a five-year/150 000 km warranty and a three-year/45 000 km service plan.
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