Driving the Renault Triber at high altitude
After a launch at sea level, the big question to be asked was how the Renault Triber would shape up at high altitude, where there is a power loss of some 17% due to our thinner air. Re-acquaintance with the Triber provided some answers, but also asked a few more questions.
One of my concerns when sampling the Renault Triber at the launch in KZN back in February was how it would cope with the 17 % power loss typical of Reef terrain, due to the thinner air at high altitude.
Thus the chance to drive it as soon as test vehicles became available after the first phases of lockdown, answered at least some of the questions I had regarding this hugely attractive 7-seater mini-cross over vehicle.
Renault feel they have introduced a whole new class of vehicle here with the Triber, and they may be right. While some reports since the launch have described the Triber as an MPV (Multi Purpose Vehicle), in essence it is more of an entry-level cross over, with the addition of a third row of seats. Priced at under R200,000 it has already attracted lots of customers.
How does the engine cope at altitude?
Given that the Triber is a 7-seater, the use of a non-turbo engine displacing a mere 999 cc and producing just 52 kW and 96 Nm of torque is sure to be up against it when it comes to normal driving in the Jo’burg area. Turbocharged engines lose very little power on the Reef, because they have exhaust-driven pumps that force-feed air into the engine, which then allows greater amounts of fuel to be fed into the engine by the injection system. In fact, turbocharged cars often perform even better at the Reef than they do at the coast, because the thinner air means less drag from the body shape. But a naturally-aspirated car like the Triber suffers and its power rating would effectively drop to around the 44 kW level. Given that it has a kerb weight of 957 kg, you can’t expect whiplash-inducing performance….
The big test for me was how the Triber would cope on the highway, taking on some of the steeper upgrades on the Gauteng ring-road system.
The Triber did better than expected
In fact the Triber did better than I expected, holding fifth gear on the uphill between Malibongwe and William Nichol off-ramps for a lot longer than I had envisioned. In fact it only needed a shift down to fourth to maintain a momentum close to the speed limit, whereas I had vivid images of a long grind in third gear! This, happily, didn’t materialise.
Open road handling
Similarly, I found the highway stability of the Triber better than expected, given that Renault’s entry-level Kwid still has a slightly twitchy trajectory at 120 km/h on the freeway (although the recent upgrade regards tyre sizing and other changes have improved matters greatly with the Kwid too).
What about town driving?
It was in around town motoring, where most of my driving was done on short trips due to the lockdown rulings, that I found the Triber to be wanting. Firstly, the little engine is extremely harsh in terms of its feedback into the cabin, and this is very noticeable when manoeuvring during parking, and in pulling away.
To counter the lack of low down torque, Renault has fitted the Triber with an extremely short first gear ratio. While this enables a reasonably decisive pull-away, it also results in a jerkiness that takes lots of concentration to avoid. No sooner have you pulled away, and you need to change to second. Shifting to second gear results in the same engine harshness feeding back into the cabin, and again, getting a smooth shift between first-and-second takes lots of concentration to apply the clutch pedal and accelerator pedals smoothly. One of the big problems here seems to be that the clutch bites very late on its travel.
Once into third gear and beyond, the Triber actually pulls quite reasonably, and keeping up with the traffic smoothly is no problem. Again, in this respect I was surprised, as at the launch at sea level I felt it might need much more gear stirring to keep a decent pace in urban cut-and-thrust. Not so.
What about the rest of the package?
If anything, I was even more impressed with the Triber’s styling on home soil in Jo’burg than I was at the launch in picturesque KZN. It has a wedge shape with a broad-shouldered look that gives it an air of solidity matched with a funkiness not often seen in a little car with people-carrying as its first priority. This is helped by the alloy wheels, as fitted to the Prestige version.
I was also impressed with the overall feeling of good build quality, something that the Kwid still lacks. The doors feel much more solid on the Triber, and the upholstery materials look to be of a far more durable fabric. They really look stylish too, while the dashboard materials are also far better than expected..
As for the seating arrangements, it again has to be said that Renault deserves huge applause for creating a useable 7-seater on a platform that is pretty much a stretched-wheelbase Kwid. The access to the third row of seats is very useable, and as we proved at the launch, it is possible for a male adult of well over 1,82 metres to find enough head and leg room in the third row.
Laden with desirable features
For a 7-seater car that costs between R171 900 and R196 900, you’d probably expect very utilitarian fittings. Not so with the Triber. The car’s interior is perhaps even more impressive than the exterior, thanks to a play on hexagonal styling themes that give it a cutting-edge look. On the top-of-the-range Prestige model I drove (the other models are the R171 900 entry-level Expression and the R181 900 Dynamique) the R196 900 price tag means an 8-inch MediaNav touch screen with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto mirroring and, impressively, a reverse camera. Park assist is also standard. All windows have electric operation, and air-con is standard.
Safety-wise, however, just two airbags are fitted, and there are no ISOFIX child seat mounts.
It has to be said that more often than not the Triber will be used as a 5-seater, and with the rear seats folded there is some 625 litres of boot space available. However, when used as a 7-seater, rear luggage room is negligible.
Verdict
The Renault Triber is going to win a lot of friends, because it offers good looks and a feature-laden interior with all the must-have features. Build-wise it is a huge improvement over its Kwid stablemate, but on the negative side, we cannot understand why Renault didn’t manage to isolate the engine properly from the cabin. Those engine vibes on start-up and pull-away aren't acceptable in our book for a new car, and spoil what would otherwise be an amazing value-for-money package.
A turbocharged model is apparently available overseas, which would make the overall performance much more palatable. As it is now, that 52 kW is adequate with one or two people aboard, but if you fill all those available seats with people then, yes, it is going to battle up long highway inclines.
Right now, it doesn’t have any direct competitors, although for an extra R25 000 you could buy a 7-seater Suzuki Ertiga which has a 1,5litre engine with 77 kW, much more substance in terms of a sorted chassis, proper engine installation and better stability, but, it has to be said, a much more staid image. A more cost-effective (sensible) choice might be Datsun’s Go+ 7-seater, which is similarly priced to the Triber, has been sorted out dynamically to a greater degree than the Renault, but is way, way behind in the style-cum-image and cabin ambience stakes.
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