2015 Renault Duster Facelift In-Depth Review: Pricing, Interior, Rivals (Video)

We spend some time in the studio with the refreshed Renault Duster, here in 1.5Dci 4WD guise. Scroll down for video.

The Renault Duster has been a bit of a surprise on the SA market. In Europe, it is a cut-price car, designed to be basic, yet rugged, and most importantly: cheap. However given our wonderful exchange rate, the car lands here at about the same price as very refined rivals like the Nissan Juke and Renault Captur. And yet, South African motorists have really taken to the plucky Renault.

In my time with it, I did come to like it’s character. It’s a no-nonsense, honest compact SUV with a hearty diesel engine and generous interior space. It also feels like it could actually go offroad, instead of just tackling the occasional pavement and gravel driveway and in reality it can with the option of two-wheel drive and four-wheel drive with lock at the touch of a dial.

And Renault have ensured it offers a decent level of creature comforts to keep up with the Jones’s. A full touchscreen infotainment system borrowed from the Clio dominates the dash and while it’s mounted too low in the dash, it is properly useful.

Load Space Advantage

Notably, the Duster offers a significant load space over rivals. With 408 litres of boot space with all the seats in place, folding the rear seats flat increases that to 1570 litres, which is double that of both the Ford Ecosport (362l-705l) and Nissan Juke (354l-830l).

A few new interior and exterior tweaks have kept the look fresh, and again, it’s just an honest, straight-forward SUV.

In this video, we take a look at the top of the range Duster Dynamique diesel 4×4, in a rather fitting military green. We also compare it to rivals such as the EcoSport and Juke, comparing pricing and covering the pros and cons of each.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on the Duster in the comments below.

Renault Duster Video