Last year, my lady wife and I went to Sheffield and the Peak District, and hired a car from Enterprise, who I have always found to be universally excellent. Having been upgraded from a Clio sized car to a small crossover in the shape of a Renault Captur (pictured), we set off in search of adventure in the rolling hills of Derbyshire.
We had not gone very far, however, when I discovered a problem with the 900cc turbo petrol engine in this particular car. It seemed permanently underpowered. I have driven little three cylinder turbocharged petrols like this before, and was singularly unimpressed with the acceleration. I thought nothing of the little green light marked 'Eco' on the dashboard, and carried on with the reduced power, slightly irritated that at every hill (and there are plenty of them in the Peak District), then car would do a very good impression of a milk float. There were other problems too.
The credit card shaped key was deeply annoying for some reason, there were no parking sensors or reversing camera, despite satellite navigation, a touch screen, Bluetooth and a whole 'Eco' display to tell me how good (or bad) my driving was. This is fine in some cars, but the Captur does not have the best rear visibility, and is quite wide. The build quality was also not particularly good, which is perfectly fine on a £7,500 Dacia Logan MCV, but not so good on a Captur which costs double that amount.
Overnight, I looked up some reviews online, and found out that I could de-activate the 'Eco' mode. The performance then returned, and the little three-cylinder turbo was far more spritely. If I owned one, I would definitely not use the 'Eco' mode for anything other than town driving. With these new performance capabilities, I searched for the cruise control activation switch, only to find it was buried at the bottom of the centre console, whereas the other controls for it were on the steering wheel. Very strange... Looking more into the 'Eco' mode display on the touch screen also revealed that the car was getting just 38 mpg on average, despite Renault's claims of 55-60 mpg.
As this was a hire car, I realise that it may have been driven a little more swiftly than usual, but as most people probably had not worked out the niceties of the 'Eco' mode, thus it had been on all the time, I imagine it was not as economical as one may have thought. Mind you, I did get a £15 rebate from Enterprise from having overfilled it at the end to put towards my next hire, so that was good.
In summary, particularly as my uncle and aunt own a Captur, I would not say it was a bad car at all. However, having recently driven some of the competition such as the Suzuki Vitara and particularly the wonderful Ssangyong Tivoli, it does come across as a little average.
