Renault Koleos delivers economy and French style

Travelling to the Eastern Cape from Gauteng is a road trip many South Africans love. I’ve been doing it almost every year for the past 30 years. Until recently some fairly priced airline options, fuelguzzling SUVs and skyrocketing fuel prices have tested my family’s love for the annual road trip.

But when you get your hands on the sporty steering wheel of a new Renault Koleos to test drive on your beloved annual road trip, thoughts of cost are quickly replaced by visions of comfort, reliability and French style.

Enter the Renault Koleos 2.5 Dynamique 4WD — and you would think the combination of all-wheel transmission and a 2.5l engine is one that’s going to test your wallet on the 1,100km journey to the Eastern Cape.

But you’d be wrong. Once you figure out the hands-free keycard and the slightly smaller adjustable steering wheel, the technological engineering and innovation of the Koleos takes you on more than a journey across the country.

Maintaining speeds of between 120-130km/h, on the well-maintained N1 highway through the flowing grasslands of the Free State, it’s easy to see why cost-conscious motorists will love this Koleos. At higher altitudes the fuel consumption remained a steady 9.1l/100km comfortably. Despite those inevitable accelerations to pass slower holiday traffic on the few hills in the province where I grew up. The 2.5l petrol engine is responsive and acceleration is smooth.

The comforts offered by the Koleos are very satisfying. Just the cooled/heating cup holders make you think the Koleos designers took a few road trips themselves before putting the SUV together. The leather interior feels classy and luxurious, yet practical.

The R-Link nine-inch screen interface connecting any device possible to the car’s impressive Arkamys 3D audio system is easy to navigate and practical — even if you don’t have a techsavvy teenager sorting connections or setting before you figure it out.

One of the most useful fittings was the sound control, volume and selection buttons situated right behind the steering, leaving the driver the option to keep both hands on the wheel and intuitively selecting sound sources or adjusting volume.

One interior design aspect I found a little impractical are the grab handles bridging the centre console with the dashboard on both the passenger and drivers’ side. It’s probably useful for a function I’ve not yet discovered, but I found it a little unnecessary and constricting leg space on the long trip.

While the Koleos glided solidly and steadily on wet, rainy roads through Karoo mountain passes, it felt light and responsive on the urban and coastal streets of Seaview outside Gqeberha. It’s on a few rural roads that you find innovations like electronic stability control and hill-start assist very useful. Not to mention safety features such as the blind spot warning, the 360° parking assistant and the tyre pressure warning systems. All designed to give the driver a sense of safety.

Unfortunately I never got to use the Koleos in full 4x4 mode. I was tempted to switch to allwheel drive in some sand next to the Maitland Beach coastline, but the car’s power and ground clearance was good enough to get us out of there in front-wheel drive. What I found comforting was that the full 4x4 functionality could be activated from inside the car at the flick of a switch.

Fuel consumption at coastal level was only marginally higher, still clocking just below 10l/100km on peri-urban roads, and slightly higher in the city.

Filling up a 60l tank at the fuel prices of January 2023 felt akin to sticking your foot into hot Karoo sand, but there’s no doubt the quality of the drive took some of the pain away. Even pushing the limits a bit on the way back to Johannesburg, the Koleos gave me just over 8l/100km — very respectable for a car with such power and specifications.

The Koleos 2.5 Dynamique 4WD retails for R635,000 and sits in a competitive market segment, with other options including top models from Toyota, Hyundai and Haval.

My view is the Renault takes full ownership of a few unique selling propositions for costconscious South Africans, and delivers a drive with that French panache we’ve come to expect.

THE RENAULT TAKES FULL OWNERSHIP OF A FEW UNIQUE SELLING PROPOSITIONS FOR COST-CONSCIOUS SOUTH AFRICANS