Renault’s KWID Auto – affordability above all else

By Stuart Johnston

The recent launch of the Renault Kwid AMT highlights the importance of good looks when it comes to car-buying. More than any other car in its price bracket ( it sells for between R126 900 for the base model to R146 900 for the new AMT), the little Renault built in India makes for a funky fashion statement. With its raised suspension and chunky front end, first-time buyers can really believe they are in a baby SUV.

Inside the cabin, they will be seduced by the touch-screen with Satnav capability, the only car in its class to offer this, and there is electric operation for the windows and aircon, not to mention a generous (for this class) 300 litre boot. Safety? Well,  there is a driver’s side airbag.

It’s quite a package for the price, and in December 2017 Renault shocked its opposition by selling  over 1 100 of these little cars! On a month-to-month basis, sales generally run in the 500 to 600 region. A huge proportion of Kwid customers are first-time buyers and women, attracted by the possibility of instant new-car mobility at R2 000 per month, as well as the free one-year insurance deal that Renault offers for this car.

What does the AMT badge mean?

The launch of the AMT model should make it even more popular, as now first-time buyers don’t even have to grapple with a clutch and gear-lever. The AMT designation means it has a manual transmission with an automatically-actuated clutch system, so the car shifts gear like an automatic. You simply dial in a round dashboard knob to select either neutral, reverse or Drive, and that’s it, the rest you do with the accelerator and brake pedal.

Starting up the little 1.0 three-cylinder engine is achieved by turning the key with your foot on the brake and the selector knob in neutral. You then select forward or reverse mode, release the brake and apply the accelerator, just like a normal automatic.

Rough engine

The engine is very rough at low-speed operation as you move away. This is partially a characteristic of a typical three-cylinder motor, but the amount of shudder you get with the Kwid is very noticeable, something you don’t get if you buy, say, a new Polo which is also equipped with a three-cylinder motor. Okay, okay, the Polo is much more expensive, but it shows that on the Kwid, not too much trouble was taken to isolate the engine roughness from the cabin.

In city driving, the new AMT gearbox is not the smoothest of operators either. Depending on your situation, the gearbox may hold a gear for longer than you want it to, or change up earlier than you intended. It gets confused in part-throttle slow driving operation, such as negotiating traffic circles.

Steering doesn’t self-centre

It is in negotiating circles, and in suburban right-hand or left-hand-turns that you notice that the steering does not self-return to the centre position, once you have released it after making the turn.

Taken together with the sometimes unpredictable transmission, urban driving can be quite a jerky affair in the Kwid AMT.

On the open road, things should be better

On the open road, things are more straightforward. Or, maybe that is an unfortunate choice of phrasing.

While the gearbox responds more predictably when you are pushing harder and attempting to maintain a good cruising speed, the changes are slow - much slower than on a normal automatic.

Plotting a straight course needs work

But it is in the area of keeping the car on the straight and narrow that I have the biggest issue with the Kwid.

That lack of self-centering steering is down to a basic steering geometry quirk that seems to be  particular to some Indian-built cars. A few Indian-built Suzukis, for example, suffer from this, to a lesser  degree.

On the Kwid, running along in the Cape with a mild wind, it means you are constantly correcting the steering to stay on course. In technical terms it means that there is not enough castor effect on the steering geometry.

What is castor effect?

Castor is a term that refers to the location of the wheel in relation to the rest of the  steering linkages. A machine with lots of castor, for instance, would be a chopper-style Harley Davidson motorcycle with forks that extend way out front. The bikes don’t turn quickly but they are extremely stable in a straight line.

The opposite of a Harley in terms of castor would be a superbike, with front forks that are nearly upright, in relation to the steering head. This means the bike turns in razor-sharp fashion, but is not great when it comes to stability in a straight line.

The Renault Kwid has a noticeable lack of castor effect in its steering geometry, which means if there are any wind variations or road surface undulations, when you cruise along at the 120 km/h speed limit you will be correcting the car all the time. The best technique, I found, was to relax your arms on the steering as much as possible and apply minimal corrections.

Is the engine adequate?

At just 50 kW and 91 Nm of torque, the power is just about adequate, as long as you plan any overtaking you want to do well in advance. The slow gear changes typical of the AMT also mean you should exercise caution when planning an overtake, and leave a lot of margin.

Of course, the other  shortcoming with this car is that it doesn’t have ABS ( anti-locking)  braking. Thus means that a first-time buyer (and novice driver)  may suffer wheel lock-up when braking the car in an emergency. But adding an ABS option would mean adding another R10 000 or so to the price. The ABS option for the Kwid will be introduced sometime in the future.

On bad roads, the Kwid has plenty of suspension travel

On bad roads, the Kwid’s high ground clearance and long suspension travel will see it cope better than many light cars. We didn’t have the chance to test the car on dirt on the recent launch for the automatic version, but speed bumps taken at higher speeds (just to test the suspension) showed  it had very good large-bump absorption. So that is a plus for city-dwelling people who need to visit their families living in rural areas with rough roads.

In summary

All these faults I have mentioned here, don’t take away from the fact that the Kwid is still a very good first-time buyers’ package. I would advise people, though, to go for the manual version. A first-time buyer should earn their driving spurs on a manual transmission gearbox anyway, so that they are equipped to cope with a manual gearbox should the sudden need ever arise.

Another thing to keep in mind is to plan for the three or four years ahead, when your free insurance scheme runs out after the first year. Many people in this first-time buyer market let their insurance policies lapse. If you have a serious accident, you will be making monthly payments on a car that you won’t be able to fix!

Interested in a young female’s opinion of the Kwid AMT, who the Kwid is actually aimed at? Click here to read Farzana Chaumoo’s take on Renault’s entry-level automatic offering.