Item: Renault Captur 2013-2019
Rating: 3.5
Author: Autocar

27 March 2014

Its manufacturer describes the Renault Renault Captur ‘an urban crossover’, though in industry parlance it’s a ‘B-segment crossover’.

In the flesh, the Renault is certainly an eye-catching car. Go for the duo-tone roof and body option and the car stands out even more, partly because the contrasting colour extends to the A-pillars. It's all the more striking with the exterior trim Gloss Pack fitted around the fog lights and to the sills and grille.

The Captur is pleasant, cheerful, undemanding and potentially very frugal
Hilton Holloway | Associate editor

And that eye-catchiness, has certainly paid dividends in the market, with Renault shifting more than 215,600 Capturs in 2016, making it Europe's best-selling B-segment crossover ahead of the Kia Soul and sibling the Nissan Juke. So significant its success, that Vauxhall, Kia and Volkswagen are all eyeing a piece of Renault's pie, however the French manufacturer refuses to sit still and has updated the small crossover for 2017.

Capturing the small Renault's vibe

The Renault Captur facelift offer two new colours and one roof colour to the range, while external changes were largely limited to a new front end resembling its bigger brother Renault Kadjar and sharing C-shaped LED day-running lights similar to the Renault Megané.

Getting the Renault Captur out on the road

Inside, the fresh-looking dash plastics are finished in a modern dimple pattern and there are some usefully deep cubby holes in the centre console. Renault has also patented the removable seat covers.

With the sliding rear seat set right back, you get a reasonable 377-litre boot, extending to a healthy 455 litres with the bench slid fully forward. There’s also a double-sided (carpet and rubber) hard boot floor that splits the rear luggage space and creates a substantial – and hidden – storage space.

Renault offers the Captur with its sweet and punchy small petrol turbo engine, which drives through a six-speed manual or dual-clutch automatic gearbox. The 118bhp unit has the legs for twisting hill roads while proving to be very smooth on the motorways. The engine is a good match for the company’s new dual-clutch ’box, which was almost complete viceless unless you stamped on the accelerator.

The 108bhp dCi diesel engine is impressively refined, although it becomes vocal in town on a trailing throttle and on long uphill roads, the driver needs to stay on the ball and drop down a ratio to keep the car’s speed up. It can manage a relaxed relaxed 12.6sec 0-62mph time but the upside is a claimed combined economy of 76.4mpg, which should mean nearly 60mpg in the real world. There is also a three-cylinder, turbocharged 0.9-litre unit with 88bhp propping up the range and a 108bhp 1.5-litre oilburner completing the engine line-up.

Certainly, the Captur isn't going to whet the appetite of the keen driver. It has lightly weighted controls and is easy to punt around. That said, it could be made to flow along rather nicely on A-roads.

However, the Captur's biggest flaw is its ride quality on ruinous surfaces, it would glide along on smooth roads, on patches of typical A-roads, where it encountered broken surfaces, the wheels crashed and pattered to a surprising degree.