Renault Clio 1.4 16v Dynamique

Clio dynamique, 1.4 16v 2003

Exterior:

I got it in black, solid paint, with the 15 inch alloys. It looks nice and sporty from the outside.

Interior:

The interior is not bad. You get bucket-ish seats adustable in height and some nice options like sunroof, A/C, decent audio (at low speeds, I'll come back to that), trip computer. You do get the odd rattle and vibration. It's a french car so that's to be expected.

Driving:

The driving position is high, even with the seat at its lower position. weird, I feel "on" the car and not "in" the car. The steering wheel is a bit to horizontal, it feels like the top of it is too far, If I adjust the seat, the pedals are too close...I guess it's just a natter of getting ised to it.

The gearbox is well guided and quite smooth, pedals are not too close together (coming from a saxo vts...), breaks are good.

The engine develops 98 bhp, which is a decent output but you need to go high in the revs to get something, there is not much bellow 2500/3000 rpm. Also, and that's the big weakness of this car to me, the gears are really short. You don't pay attention to it when you drive in a city but once you get on the motorway, well, you just want to go back in a city...at 70 mph the engine revs at about 3500 rpm, 4000 rpm at 80mph, etc. To the noise of the engine, add the noise of the tyres, the noise of the wind and you end up with such a noisy car that it's difficult to understand what is said on the radio. If you want to be in a comfortable environment, you need to drive at 60/65 mph. Annoying.

To summarize, it's a nice little car but forget long motorway trips, or with earplugs maybe...