Test drive Renault Arkana: costs, problems, impressions

Renault Arkana is beauty, perfect tuning of the turbo engine and variator, as well as guaranteed attention from the drivers. We analyze the features of a coupe-crossover after a long test

This is the most beautiful car of the brand in Russia. Drivers of modest cars and owners of premium crossovers look at him. The latter, however, shyly turn away, because their status does not allow them to admire the car of a budget brand. But it just so happened that you can't go far from the classic forms of a coupe-crossover. So they see the BMW X6, then, if you look from afar - the Mercedes GLC Coupe, or even the Haval F7.

Then all the attention goes to the LED boomerang headlights and spectacular red lines of stoplights, which then on the roads can no longer be confused with anything. And only at the end do you see the nameplate of the French brand.

It is a truly stylish car and a pleasure to look at. It is doubly pleasant to do this with a handy smart key in your bag, which is included in expensive configurations. The car reacts to it by opening the locks, and when leaving the passenger compartment, it locks the doors itself, says goodbye with a pleasant beep and escorts the headlights to the entrance. If such concern does not cause affection, then you simply do not have a heart.

We tested the Arkana with all-wheel drive, a 1,3-liter turbo engine with a capacity of 150 hp. and a CVT X-Tronic variator, simulating the behavior of a seven-speed automatic. Among the pleasant and important features - a system for choosing driving styles with the ability to switch to sport mode, and a blind spot monitoring system, as well as a multimedia system with Yandex.Auto, Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. All this for $ 19 in the top version.

In this case, some of the options can be painlessly abandoned. For example, you can easily do without atmospheric interior lighting or an all-round camera. Then the car in the Style configuration will cost $ 17 for the front-wheel drive version and $ 815 for the all-wheel drive version.

In the case of Arkana, people are most disappointed by the discrepancy between the wrapper and the filling - they say, everything is too simple inside. In this case, I would like to suggest that you look at the price tag again and remind you that this is a budget brand after all. The target audience of the model is still not ready to pay extra several hundred thousand for options and materials. And for those who need more, Renault has the flagship Koleos crossover.

Therefore, for its price, the Arkana salon looks decent. Comfortable seats, hard but pleasant-looking plastic on the dashboard, comfortable steering wheel. The most simple, no frills, twists for adjusting the heating. There is room for small items and space for a mobile phone. Of course, the versions with the EasyLink multimedia system and a touchscreen look richer, and driving a car that can be combined with a cell phone is much more convenient.

In addition to Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, the crossover has a built-in Yandex.Avto interface, but it will take a lot of time to connect it. When you get acquainted with a smartphone, the system offers to select the default interface, but it is very difficult to understand how to assign a different system later. The 125-page Talmud, which outlines every step of communication with the system step by step, will not help either. And the main incident is that the owner of Yandex.Telephone was never able to get Arkana to work with him in Yandex.Auto mode.

You will also need to get used to the features of the budget touchscreen. The head unit itself froze several times for a couple of months and did not respond to pressing the screen and buttons. To revive it, it was necessary to turn off and start the car several times in a row. And once, when starting the car, the large touchscreen simply did not start and came to life only after half an hour of travel and another restart. I immediately recall the problems with all this set of capabilities in the early Lada XRAY. But if everything works, it will work well, and Yandex will even mute the music a little at the time of the navigator's notifications.

Another strong point of the Arkana is the balanced operation of the turbo engine and CVT. This pair works without a hint of dips, the engine responds quickly and smoothly to pressing the gas pedal. Up to a hundred such a car accelerates in 10,5 seconds - this does not dispose to recklessness and laying sharp turns, as well as light rolls that are felt when cornering. But in urban conditions and for acceleration when overtaking such parameters are more than enough. By the way, cruise control is fine here too.

If you wish, you can switch to a sport mode, which really noticeably, and not nominally, changes the character of the car. Average urban fuel consumption without trying to save was about 8 liters per 100 kilometers. The engine consumes both 95th and 92nd gasoline, and in principle nothing has changed in the operation of the unit when switching to cheaper fuel. The service interval does not depend on the type of fuel either - the same 15 thousand kilometers.

For those who cannot convince themselves in any way of the reliability of the turbo engine, the arsenal has a classic 1,6-liter aspirated engine with a capacity of 114 hp, which is paired with both "mechanics" and the same variator. True, you will have to forget about the dynamics here - it will take about 100 seconds to accelerate to 13 km / h.

Among the complaints about the Arkana were the insufficiently large interior, and the low roof at the back. Having driven rather tall passengers, I did not hear any complaints, although some of them were really on the verge of contact with the roof. But here it is already a matter of taste - a beautiful coupe or, for example, a stern and tall Duster. In addition, Arkana, whatever one may say, has a rather large trunk, which in my case closed the questions with the transportation of bicycles and other sports equipment.

Now Arkana holds the last positions of the top 25 most popular models in Russia, that is, the car was at least noticed, but it did not become a real bestseller. But Renault Kaptur disappeared from the table, and for the brand this should be a wake-up call. Soon the updated Kaptur will enter the market, which will have a more modern salon, and here the choice of the brand fans will become even more complicated. Do not discount the second Duster, which will also be registered in Moscow someday. In the meantime, Arkana is a clear favorite in this trinity in terms of style, convenience, and even value proposition.