2018 Renault Captur vs 2019

What's the difference?

If you're an inner-city slicker, the chic-looking Captur Intens will likely be all the car you ever need. It's small enough to navigate cramped laneways, easy to park and even easier on the eye. Outside the CBD, though, cracks do begin to appear, so if you're chasing spirited driving or long-distance hauls, the Captur won't quite capture your heart. 

The Captur might be one of Europe’s strongest-selling small SUVs, but what it offers doesn’t translate well into Australia’s market, where the sheer number of highly specified and keenly priced competitors puts a strain on its value.

The powerful new engine is welcome, and it continues to serve up plenty of that unique French style, it’s just a shame to see those things come first over today’s advanced safety items and a truly slick drive experience.

By far the best part of the Captur story is its chic, cute French handbag on shining alloy wheels exterior design.

The two-tone paint job works a treat, with our test car painted a creamy white but with a black roof and a strip along the base of the car that climbs up and into the body as it reaches the rear door. It breaks up the monotony of the otherwise smooth bodywork, and gives the little Captur a sense of youthful exuberance.

Climb inside and you’re met by leather-wrapped seats and soft-touch materials on the door trims, but they're counteracted by the rock-hard plastics that surround the centre screen and gear shift. The entertainment screen does look very good, though; a sleek and modern unit framed by gloss-black plastics and with its major controls integrated into the screen.

There’s a definite air of class in the Captur’s cabin, and there are plenty of little nods to design (like the shape of the air-con controls) that you’d discover over time. 

This is one of the Captur’s strong suits. At least, on the outside. It comes with oodles of euro charm. I like its same-but-different approach to the Clio’s styling formula. The light fittings and grille insert are familiar but toughened up a little with SUV-specific flair. LED light fittings look the business, with their blue tinge contrasting the car’s orange and black, and the way the DRLs clasp the lower vents and echo into the bodywork is oh-so satisfying.

The black bumpers that ride over the wheelarches and expand around the sides of the car are a nice touch. Contrast chrome and silver plastics are applied tastefully. I’m not as keen on the rear of this car as I am on the front, but everything remains proportional, and the little spoiler that runs off the roof rounds the package out nicely.

Inside, things aren’t as great. It looks okay from a distance, as you’re hopping in, but once you’re there its easy to see this car’s flaws.

You’re confronted with this huge expanse of dashboard reaching out to the front of the car, void of any particular aesthetic treatment, and a swathe of boring, grey, hollow plastics off-set by chromes and silvers that look okay, but are not great to touch.

The dash cluster has a big chunky look, the same as the Clio, but it's still on an off-putting angle, with old-school, chunky red dials. The leather trim on the steering wheel is nice but doesn’t make up for the switchgear, which all feels a little more Fisher-Price than Fisher&Paykel.

Is there really an excuse for dials, switches and even a gearknob that have far too much movement in them, even when locked in position? It feels lazy. Those who have driven this car’s Korean and Japanese rivals will be accustomed to superior interior finishes by now.

I have to say, this criticism does not apply to the Captur’s seats, which are finished in a lovely, plush leather trim. They have good side-bolstering and a commanding position with great visibility. The same applies to the second row.

Well, that depends largely on where you’re sitting. Up front, the room is fine, and the vision from the high driving position is terrific.

There are two cupholders that seperate the front seats (though one is bigger than the other) and a pencil case-sized storage bin in the pulldown armrest that splits the front seats. There’s room in each front door for bottles, too.

Climb into the back, though, and things get tighter. Behind my own (178cm) driving position, you’ll find the knee and headroom is actually pretty good, thanks in part to an arch in the roof, but you’d be a cruel person to squeeze three adults into the backseat. 

There are also storage nets on the rear of each front seat, and there’s room in each door for bottles. With no pull-down armrest, there are no cupholders, nor are there any vents, power or USB connections for backseat riders. There are two ISOFX attachment points, one in each window seat.

A removable shelf allows you to alter the height of the boot, under which lives a space-saver spare tyre. You’ll get 377 litres of space with the rear seats in place, swelling to 1235 litres with the rear seats folded flat. 

Those front seats are comfortable and offer plenty of room, but what’s up with the French and neglecting cabin storage? The Captur is a bit better in this regard compared to the Peugeot 208 I had the week before – which had poor excuses for cupholders and next to nothing in the doorcards – but still, it trails behind its rivals.

Front passengers get small cupholders in each door, a trench under the climate controls, a glovebox and a centre top-box tethered to the driver’s seat, which has possibly the smallest storage area inside it I’ve ever seen. You can fit maybe a slim wallet in there. I was a little frustrated by the clunky manual front-seat controls, which were hard to reach and operate. The Intens is a top-spec model, at least give the driver electric sliding adjust.

In the back you’ll get the same great seats as you do in the front, but rear passengers get even less useful bottle holders in the doors, some netting on the back of the front seats, and a neat trench in the middle that even has a 12V power supply, at the cost of legroom for the middle passenger.

There are no air vents back there, either. Legroom is okay for an SUV this size, but nothing impressive, while headroom was more than ample for my 182cm tall frame, despite the sunroof eating some of the ceiling.

Boot space comes in at a fairly decent 377L – comparing well to the 350L of the Fiat 500X, but not so well to the 410L boot of the Peugeot 2008. The Captur’s rear load space has a removable floor, so you can either boost the space to 455L, or a have flat floor with the second row folded flat, your choice.

In that second-row-down configuration, the Captur grants 1235L of space.

While Renault has made some significant improvements to its multimedia offering in the last few years, I found the Intens’ native system a bit clunky to use, and without the option for Apple CarPlay I was stuck with it.

The Captur comes with some great features, some not-so great features, and a few notable omissions. Let’s have a look.

Our Intens is the top of a two-variant range. Coming in at $29,990 (MSRP), you’ll get 17-inch alloy wheels, a 7.0-inch multimedia touchscreen (with Android Auto, but oddly no Apple CarPlay…), built-in sat-nav, auto LED lights front and rear with cornering fog lights, a fixed panoramic sunroof, leather-trimmed seats, with heated front ones, leather-trimmed steering wheel, 360-degree parking sensors, a reversing camera, ‘park assist’ auto parking, keyless entry with push-start, single-zone climate control and an auto-dimming rear view mirror.

Not a bad set of equipment, but it’s also hardly a top-spec CX-3 or Hyundai Kona, which come with much more, albeit at a marginally higher price. It would be nice to at least see the inclusion of power-adjustable front seats.

Also, it’s incredibly confusing that this car doesn’t come with Apple CarPlay. It’s hardly excusable when it does come with Android Auto and, get this, the base model Zen gets a slightly different media system that does support Apple CarPlay at the cost of ‘enhanced’ built-in sat nav. Weird.

There’s no all-wheel-drive version of the Captur, and it’s also a bit light on active-safety items, which we’ll explore in the safety section of this review.

In its favour, the style items that the Captur comes with look fantastic. The two-tone colour scheme is standard on every car, even at Zen level (you can option a solid scheme if you really want) and the 17-inch alloys and little design touches on the exterior really add to this car’s appeal. Our car’s ‘Atacama Orange’ scheme is a $1000 option. The leather seat trim is excellent and well above average for this segment.

For the same money as the Captur Intens you can hop into similarly equipped and style focused euro rivals like the Fiat 500X Pop Star ($29,990) and Peugeot 2008 Allure ($29,990). The Volkswagen T-Roc and T-Cross are on their way to shake up this segment soon, so look out for those.

Calling this engine the 'bigger petrol' is a relative term, given the smaller option is a (almost literally) pint-sized 0.9-litre unit. This one, on the other hand, is a whopping (by comparison) 1.2-litre turbocharged petrol engine (so, two pints). 

It will produce 88kW at 4900rpm and 190Nm at 2000rpm (not what you'd call exciting numbers), fired to the front wheels via a six-speed automatic transmission. And as a result of all that, the Captur will clip 0-100km/h in 10.9 seconds and push on to a top speed of 192km/h.

Thanks to Renault’s tech tie up with Mercedes-Benz's parent company, Daimler, the Captur shares its brand-new 1.3-litre turbocharged four-cylinder petrol engine with the new Benz A-Class range.

In this incarnation, which Renault calls the ‘150 TCe’ – you’ll get 110kW/250Nm. This engine is leagues better than the slightly hopeless 88kW 1.2L engine that came before it and actually boosts the Captur’s outputs way ahead of its euro competition.

The Intens drives the front wheels only via a six-speed ‘EDC’ dual-clutch automatic transmission, which I wasn’t a fan of. Find out why in the driving segment of this review.

Renault claims the Captur consumes a frugal 5.8L/100km on the combined cycle, which is really very good. Emissions are a claimed 130g/km of C02. Our real-world testing returned a figure closer to 7.5L/100km, though.

The 45-litre fuel tank will only except the more expensive 95RON or 98RON premium fuel.

The Captur Intens with its new engine carries a claimed/combined fuel consumption number of 5.4L/100km. Usually I struggle to hit anything below six without hybrid-assistance tech, although it was worth a shot given that this Renault also has stop-start technology and hardly weighs anything.

After a week of driving, though, the best I could muster was 7.2L/100km. The Captur’s on-board computer has a ‘Trip Report’ feature, which gives you an eco-score and analyses your driving behaviour. It’s kind of neat. I’m sure if you made a game out of it you could get this number down closer to 6.0L/100km.

You’ll need to fill the Captur’s 45-litre tank with at least 95RON mid-grade petrol.

It’s a mixed bag, the Captur. It is perfectly suited to city life: diminutive proportions, easy vision, light steering and plenty of technology. And so it fulfils that core brief perfectly. But unlike a European capital, Aussie city-slickers inevitably venture outside the CBD walls, and it’s there that cracks begin to appear. 

When you ask too much of it, you find the engine and gearbox combination is underwhelming, to the point where overtaking on the freeway becomes a long-distance challenge. The steering feels soft and disconnected, too, and the suspension is clearly set up to favour suppleness over sportiness.

Put simply, there's a sponginess to the drive experience that doesn't inspire confidence, and it feels significantly less dynamic than the best in the city-SUV segment.

But the city is its home, and it fulfils its duties there with aplomb. Even as far as small SUVs go, the Captur isn’t exactly a towering example, but the seating position gives you this commanding view of the road that makes you feel like you’re looming above the traffic.  

Clever bonnet design makes it fade away from sight, too, and provides a huge, panoramic view of the road ahead, giving you terrific vision. The view out of the rear side windows, though, (like when you're checking your blind spots), is harder.

Okay, so the new engine is great. The Captur has plenty of punch now, some might say almost too much punch, as stomping on the accelerator will result in wheelspin and aggressive torque steer, thanks to peak torque availability from just 1600rpm. Still, it’s a welcome experience to drive a Captur that doesn’t feel breathless.

What lets down the experience is the transmission. I was genuinely surprised to find that the Captur is now equipped with a six-speed dual-clutch, as for most of my drive week it behaved with the clumsiness of a single-clutch automated manual. I thought these transmissions were a thing of the past, but despite its modern dual-clutch moniker, it was far too easy to catch the Captur in the wrong gear or, worse still, searching for the right one for far too long.

Even when driving in a straight line, shifts seemed slow compared with contemporary VW dual clutches; you could feel the Captur’s frame lurch forward slightly as it worked its way through each gear in a rather mechanical fashion.

Aside from the transmission marring the experience, the rest of the Captur offers a decent drive experience. The suspension feels just right up front, giving the small SUV a compliant ride, although it was a little stiff with its simple torsion-bar rear. It was easy to get the back dancing around over road imperfections.

That being said, driver and passenger comfort were decent, no matter what you heard the rear suspension getting up to, partially thanks to those great seats.

Steering was fast, but almost too light in some situations, and noise intrusion in the cabin was at acceptable levels, with the engine making itself largely unknown.

It’s tough for the little French SUV because there are significantly more popular and very good rivals in Australia’s market compared to Europe’s.

In terms of more advanced features, the Captur Intens gets Blind Spot Monitoring (BSM) and… that’s it.

You get the regular suite of electronic stability aids, a reversing camera, and just four airbags.

Despite that, three-cylinder versions of the Captur carried maximum five-star ANCAP safety ratings from 2013. This four-cylinder model has yet to be tested, but it’s hard to see how it can get close to a five-star rating with no additional active safety.

The now-expected auto emergency braking (AEB), Rear-Cross Traffic Alert (RCTA), Lane departure warning (LDW), Lane Keep Assist (LKAS), and active cruise features are all missing, even from the options list.

The Captur has two ISOFIX child seat mounting points on the two outboard rear seats and three top-tether mounts across the second row.

Renault has seriously upped its game on the ownership front, and the Captur Intens offers up a five-year/ unlimited kilometre warranty, five years of free roadside assistance and a three-year capped price servicing program. 

The Renault Captur Intens requires servicing every 12 months or 30,000km.

Renault offers a slightly confusing five-year unlimited kilometre warranty with four years of 24-hour roadside assist and just three years of capped-price servicing.

Each of the three years the service cost is set at $349, with the addition of an air filter ($52) and a pollen filter ($60) every 24 months. That service cost is not terribly expensive, but also not cheap. You’re on your own after the three years of fixed pricing is up.