SA Road Tests

Welcome

This is the home of automobile road tests in South Africa. We drive South African cars, SUVs and LCVs under South African conditions. It also just happens that most of the vehicles we drive are world cars as well, so what you read here probably applies to the models you can get at home.
*To read one of our road tests, just select from the menu on the left. Hover your cursor over the manufacturer's name, then choose from the drop-down menu.
*Please remember too, that prices quoted were those ruling on the days I wrote the reports.


This is a launch report. In other words, it's simply a new model announcement. The driving experience was limited to a short drive over a prepared course chosen to make the product look good. We can therefore not tell you what it will be like to live with over an extended period, how economical it is, or how reliable it will be. A very brief first impression is all we can give you until such time as we get an actual test unit for trial. Thank you for your patience.


First drive: We put Renault’s 2013 Duster medium SUV through its paces

This product is called Dacia Duster in some countries

Eat my duster

Published in Witness Wheels on Thursday September 26, 2013

In an automobile world driven at warp speed by innovation-hungry engineers, egged on by enthusiastic marketers, Renault saw the writing on the wall some years ago. Ordinary folk cannot afford technological marvels with five-year effective life spans and priced beyond the bounds of sanity. Once protective cover runs out, Joe and Joanne Average are unable to shoulder huge bills for whichever fancy electronic gadgets may fail.

Mindful of this, Renault bought the Romanian Dacia plant in 1999; both as a factory and as a pool of partly trained workers to spearhead its push into the old USSR. Other localised manufacturing initiatives include plants in South Africa, Brazil and India. Dacia derivatives we know are Logan, Sandero and the subject of this launch, the Duster mid-size SUV.

Economically minded doesn’t mean it’s cheaply made. Duster is designed and manufactured to European norms, but with ruggedness built in to withstand the rigours of Russian, South American and Indian roads. Comfortably middle sized, it’s 4315mm long on a wheelbase of 2673mm, 1822mm wide and 1625mm high. Suspension with long travel and effective damping ensured excellent comfort over some rather unpleasant roads we encountered on the familiarisation drive; while head, leg and shoulder room was plentiful for five fully grown occupants.

There are four models; 1.6-litre, 16-valve petrol engines power Expression and Dynamique 4x2 versions, while Renault’s new 1.5-litre, K9K THP diesel drives 4x2 and all-wheel drive Dynamique derivatives. All front-wheel drivers share twist beam rear suspension and many items of equipment, but the awd diesel has a few features of its own.

Specifically it uses multilink rear suspension; develops maximum torque at lower revs, has a diesel particulate filter that benefits fuel economy; does without a backup alarm; is the only one with ESP and traction control (part of the electronic awd system borrowed from Nissan); has a fully sized spare wheel in the boot (the others use a spacesaver stashed underneath) plus, obviously, an electronic drive selector marked 2WD, Auto and Lock. Its final party trick is a stump-pulling bottom ratio geared for 5,79 km/h per 1000 rpm. There is no low range transfer case, but this is a pretty neat and inexpensive alternative.

Keeping the spare inside adds 5mm of ground clearance (210mm rather than 205mm) while enabling its impressive 36-degree departure angle. The trade-off is that it steals 67 litres of cargo space, dropping it from 475 litres with seatbacks up, to only 408. With seats folded, volumes increase to 1636 and 1570 litres.

Off-road time was spent at a man-made 4x4 course on a private farm. Let’s just say it was reasonably challenging, you wouldn’t take your sister’s pretty little school run device there and the Duster handled it well. As an aside the farmer, on first hearing that the track fodder was to be Renaults, snorted: “All you English are insane.” He changed his tune after watching the organisers’ first run.

Equipment on the basic Expression 4x2 version includes ABS brakes with EBA; four airbags; manual air conditioning; a six-function onboard computer; CD and MP3 player with radio, auxiliary and USB ports, Bluetooth and satellite controls; remote central locking; electric windows all around; powered mirrors; reverse parking sensors; fog lamps; roof rails and 16” steel wheels. Dynamique models gain MediaNav touchscreen navigation; leather bound steering wheel and gear knob; satin chrome on roof rails, door handles and mirrors; front and rear skid plates and side skirt covers, and sixteen-inch alloy wheels with 215/65 “crossover” tyres.

Optional packages include Styling with a 60mm stainless steel nudge bar and LED daytime running lights; Touring with an armrest between the front seats, a tow hitch assembly and cross bars for the roof rack; Adventurer adds wheel arch trims and protector panels for door bottoms and skirts, and the Protection pack provides a further parking aid, mud flaps and a boot protector. Six colours are available, but “duster” yellow isn’t one of them. Sorry about that.

Information gathered at a manufacturer-sponsored media launch

To read our review of the 2014 Duster diesel 4x4 click here

The numbers
Prices range from R194 900 to R239 900
Engines:
1)  1598cc, 16-valve, four-cylinder
Power: 78 kW at 5850 rpm
Torque: 145 Nm at 3750 rpm
Zero to 100 km/h: 11,5 seconds
Maximum speed: 165 km/h
Mixed cycle fuel consumption (claimed): 7,5 l/100 km
2) 1461cc, 8-valve, SOHC, four-cylinder turbodiesel
Power: 80 kW at 3900 rpm
Torque: 240 Nm at 2250 rpm (4x2) and 1750 rpm (4x4)
Zero to 100 km/h: 11,8 seconds (4x2) and 12,5 seconds (4x4)
Maximum speed: 171 km/h
Mixed cycle fuel economy (claimed): 5,5 l/100 km (4x2) and 5,3 l/100 (4x4)
Tank: 50 litres
Ground clearance: 210/205mm. See text
Approach/departure/breakover angles (4x4): 30/36/23 degrees
Warranty: 5 years/150 000 km; with roadside assistance
Service plan: 3 years/45 000 km; at 15 000 km intervals

What We Do

This is a one-man show, which means that every car reviewed is given my personal evaluation and receives my own seat of the pants judgement - no second hand input here.
Every test car goes through real world driving; on city streets littered with potholes, speed bumps and rumble strips, on freeways and if its profile demands, dirt roads as well.

I do my best to include relevant information like real life fuel economy or a close mathematical calculation, boot size or luggage space, whether the space is both usable and accessible, whether life-sized people can use the back seat (where that applies), basic specs of the vehicle and performance figures if they are published. In the case of clearly identified launch reports, fuel figures are of necessity the laboratory numbers provided with the release material. If I ever place an article that doesn't cover most things, it's probably because I have dealt with that vehicle at least once already, so you will be able to find what you want in another report under the same manufacturer's heading in the menu on the left.

My reviews and launch reports appear on Thursdays in the Wheels supplement to The Witness, South Africa's oldest continuously running newspaper, and occasionally on Saturdays in Weekend Witness as well. I drive eight to ten vehicles each month, most months of the year (except over the festive season) so not everything gets published in the paper. Those that are, get a tagline but the rest is virgin, unpublished and unedited by the political-correctness police.

Hope you like what you see, because there are no commercial interests at work here. As quite a few readers have found, I answer every serious enquiry from my home email address, with my phone numbers attached, so they can see I do actually exist.



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