Review for The Koleos is Renault's second product in India.

SUVave entry

The Koleos is Renault's second product in India.

Smooth road, great visibility and kilometres flying past effortlessly. Ah, it was so relaxing! I was about to fall asleep when realisation hit home that for the past half an hour we were belting the new Renault Koleos on the wrong road. What we were to take a left turn off the Ring Road around Mysore towards the Mysore-Bangalore Road State Highway 17, but had swung over too early. As the miles passed, we didn't encounter the landmarks mentioned in the route guide, nor could we find traces of the four-lane way we came on. There was a flight to catch and the coach to the airport was leaving in an hour. Nature, it seems, had conspired with us so that we could give the Koleos a hard once-over both on the road and off it. We missed the coach, but learnt a lot about the SUV in the process. Design As you approach the Koleos, you notice that while it's physically large, it's not an imposing design. It seems friendly, even, with an air of maturity. The gaping, wide grille, half-lidheadlamps leading to the contoured hood, large windows, chrome roof rails and a sloping rear all contribute to the stylish character of the car. The beautiful two-tone wheels wrapped with 17-inch rubber give it a sporty stance. You can find out a lot about this car just from the exterior itself, for example, the groundclearance and the amount of suspension travel available hint at its abilities to take bad roads in its stride. The Bose badges on the front fenders tell you that once you're inside, you can expect to be cocooned in an envelope of sound, isolated from the cacophony outside. Interior Step inside (and you really do have to step inside) and you're greeted with a two-tone dash consisting of a black upper part and beige lower part that blends in to the rest of the interior. A black steering wheel with silver accents stares back at you from the dash through which you get a peak at the neatly arranged meter cluster. The car 'comes with steering mounted controls' — but that's Renault speak because the important buttons are placed on a separate unit on the right side of the steering. Not having driven the Fluence sedan before it, I was a bit confused at first about how to operate the audio controls, but got the hang of it quickly once I realised they were trigger buttons not push buttons. The central console is embellished with faux carbon fibre finish and aluminium accents that look very high quality. At a glance, it all looks well laid out too, until you try to use anything. All the controls for the audio system are counter-intuitive and take getting used to. Wanted to turn down the volume? Well, too bad, you just changed the song, this went on for a while before we just gave up and stuck to the 'steering' controls. The Bose sound system works brilliantly providing good, clean sound, but for a car that costs over `20 lakh, the user interface needs to be given a thorough once-over to make it more user-friendly. Comfort The driver's seat is power adjustable and finding a comfortable position is not hard to do. There are a few niggling issues that affect rear seat comfort though. The tray tables placed on the front seat-backs are nice touches but might restrict knee movement for taller passengers and the storage tray placed under the front seats also rob the passengers of precious toe room. That aside though, for average sized people, rear seat comfort is great. The rear seat-back is adjustable for rake, so pull a tab, adjust seat-back, pull down centre arm rest and enjoy the impeccable ride quality of this behemoth. Ride and handling On the well surfaced roads leading away from Bangalore, the smooth ride of the car was very expected, but as we neared Kabini, the roads, if you can call them that, brought out the best in the Koleos. It really came into its own on the loose, broken, gravelly surface of the village roads, soaking up every bump, ditch and protrusion in the road without skipping a beat. In fact, it was only when we tried our best Collin McRae impression that the sump guard made ground contact. The small effort made to hoist yourself up into the seat is a small price to pay for this kind of ground clearance. On-road manners are great. The car responds nicely to inputs without much drama and when pushed shows signs of body roll, but it's controlled nicely by the suspension. Performance The automatic transmission coupled to a turbo-diesel is a perfect combination for highway driving. But at low speeds, the reluctance of the transmission to downshift combined with the mild turbo lag of the engine make it feel sluggish. But it can be easily overcome with slight modification in driving style (squeezing the throttle instead of stomping on it) or changing the transmission into manual/sport mode. In this mode, the transmission behaves like a proper sports car transmission in that it doesn't up-shift even when you approach the redline and doesn't hesitate to drop a cog to send you on your way. Steering mounted paddle shifters would have rounded out the package nicely. Also worth noting is that this car doesn't come with an all wheel drive (AWD) system that stays on all the time; instead, it's an intelligent four wheel drive (4WD) that under normal conditions can be left in 2WD mode for better fuel efficiency. If there's chance of wheel slippage, it can be switched to auto mode where processors monitor each wheel and splits the torque between the axles as it sees fit. Then there's the 4WD lock mode that locks the torque split at 50:50 front:rear when the need arises. Verdict All things considered, the Renault Koleos makes for a great self-driven vehicle thanks to its fantastic ride quality, on-road manners and off-road prowess. It makes for an even better chauffeur-driven car provided you're not so tall that the tray tables get in your way. Renault plans on flooding India with many models over the next couple of years and if they're built like this one, we say bring them on!