Renault Duster

                                     

2012 has been a year of uprising of the SUV’s and MUV’s and Renault has taken full advantage of the situation to launch its SUV the Duster. As the name suggests the car comes with very masculine and powerful looks and performance and in order to influence the markets the price has been set very competitively. The vehicle is sold under the tag of Dacia worldwide and had a very good start in India with good bookings and demand. 

                                    

Duster features a monocoque construction like most of the other competitors in the current scenario giving it

a car like look and driving feel and making it lighter. The front side of Duster is the most attractive part, it is simple and sturdy enhanced by large wheel arches and headlamps and chrome cladded grille. Sporty look is 

implanted in the car through the alloy wheels, roof rails and the skid plate. To protect the notion of off-roader claddings are included all around the body with good ground clearance of 205mm.

                                     

The raised black cladding at the front houses the fog lamps. Another example of the simplicity of Duster is its hood which doesn’t get heavy curves rather than some simple contour lines. The side becomes more sporty with a lot of contours running along sides, which is further enhanced with bulky wheel arches.  Rear has a sleek hexagonal windshields with vertical tail lamps. It has a total length of over 4metres and stands tall with more than 1600mm height added with larger wheel base of 2673mm.

The interiors doesn’t give us any feel of cost cutting and provides sufficient ambience and space inside.  An interesting feature about this SUV is that it offers only a five seater option in order to save its compactness. A lot of the interior resembles a sedan rather than a SUV, but attempts to make the interior sporty is visible all over.  Starting with the dash which seats ac vents on brown console, typical large instrument console and various control keys fitted to a 3spoke steering, all render towards the sporty nature of the interior.

The seats are finished with good quality materials and it runs all over the interior giving the luxury face of the SUV. The front seats are electrically controlled and a compact music system at the center of the dash. It offers a lot of leg and head space added with climate control air conditioning which provides the best of comforts for the passengers. The boot space is about 475litres which is sufficient to hold the luggage for a family and it can be increased by folding the back seats. On the whole the interior is neatly finished and is not overdone.

Duster comes in at three engine options with three variants. The diesel variant is available at two power outputs of 84bhp and 108.5bhp with the same capacity of 1461cc. This was done so to obtain a fuel efficient and a powerful version with the same engine. Fuel is supplied by common rail direct injection and is initiated by SOHC. The 84bhp powered engine produces a peak torque of 200nm and the 110bhp powered engine produces a torque of 248nm. The petrol variant gets a 1598cc capacity engine with a lesser fuel efficiency of 13.8kmpl. It engages multi point fuel injection system and produces a power of 100.5bhp at 5859rpm and a peak torque of 145nm at 3750rpm.