Renault Captur review

The Captur drives as well as it needs to. For the facelift Renault has recalibrated the steering and as before it’s very well-judged – not overly fast, nor twirly-light – and even on broken roads, it keeps its composure.

If only the same could be said for the ride. We used to think the Mk2 Captur was a comfortable car but with the introduction of the hybrid comes new shock absorbers and revised suspension geometry in order to make it sportier. Sigh. On the 19in wheels of the top-spec trim the Captur is unforgiving and wholly incapable of softening impacts to your derriere. Even on unblemished roads, it agitates away constantly. Case in point: we immediately went to engage Comfort mode, and found it was already in Comfort mode. Awkward.

And it’s not like the changes transform the drive either. It’s certainly more responsive, but the chassis is never truly engaging or what you might call ‘fun’ within the context of a diminutive crossover. Renault has erred here.

Are either of the engines any good?

Not really. Your options are made up of a 1.0-litre 3cyl outputting 89bhp and 118lb ft of torque, or a 1.6-litre hybrid meting out 144bhp and 184lb ft. We’ve not tried the former since the Mk2 was launched but 0-62mph in 14.3 seconds speaks volumes about how underpowered it is. The manual gearshift is lightweight and fairly positive, but we’d avoid. Especially if you anticipate carrying passengers or needing to be anywhere on time.

The hybrid doesn’t have that problem. It has other problems. Like how it frequently spikes the revs to feed the 1.2kWh battery. It’s deeply annoying, and means you’re always second-guessing your accelerator inputs, interrupting the flow of the drive. When it does settle, you do at least get brief periods of smooth running.

It’s a shame because the setup is ostensibly quite clever. There’s one electric motor to start the car and get you going, while a second motor starts up the engine when it’s needed and smooths out the gear changes in the six-speed auto. Said gearbox is a mightily interesting one, because it’s a multi-mode dog-type box without a clutch, similar to the ones used in F1 (dial down your cynicism).

Anything else I should know?

All in all, as either the petrol or hybrid, the Captur drives like a considerably more mature car than its predecessor. But judging it against that is like pitting Spotify against the gramophone. The game’s moved on.

The fresh exterior design seems to have improved the wind noise issues we had with the pre-update version of the car, but at higher speeds that just means you get to enjoy the hoarse engine note more clearly. Yay for that.

Naturally the hybrid is the more economical of the two engines, claiming 61.4mpg WLTP versus the 3cyl’s 47.9mpg. We got reasonably close to the hybrid’s lab figure – we’ll leave you to decide if it’s worth putting up with to save on fill-ups.