Renault in India wasn't really a known brand till the Duster came around and changed the French company's fortunes. Products like the Fluence and Koleos weren't on top of people's mind and even the more mass products, Pulse and Scala, were struggling to find a firm ground in the marketplace. The Duster is, in essence, a Romanian product and flaunts the logo of a brand that not many across the world know - Dacia. Renault has controlling stake in Dacia and that's how in India, we get the Duster marketed as a Renault product.
Ever since the Duster came out, it'd been a great success and it's the only SUV in the country to cross the 1-lakh sales mark in a span of two years. After having operated with only a two-wheel drive option in the country so far, Renault has finally launched the compact SUV in all-wheel drive avatar as well.
There's been, as the company claims, extensive work done on the 4x4 variant and the Duster features independent suspension all-round to tackle off-road stuff with more ease. There are a lot of changes made to the cabin as well. The Duster gets MediaNav which is essentially a big media screen that controls all the usual functions - music, navigation and communication. There's also useful tell-all display in the instrument panel which gives information about service intervals to real-time fuel consumption and distance-to-empty etc. The colour scheme inside has changed too and the Duster looks slightly more upmarket with new upholstery.
The Duster, in its AWD trim, gets a long list of safety features too - it includes all the regular suspects like ABS, ESP, ASR etc, but what's cooler is that it gets something called 'Understeer Control' which is a system that will basically sense if the front end is washing away based on complex algorithms and get you in check. The Duster AWD also gets impact sensing door unlocking feature which can come in great help in case of a mishap.
Renault, with the AWD Duster, has introduced something called i Drive (BMW wouldn't be too happy about that!) that comes with Shift-on-the-Fly to go into the all-wheel drive mode. There's also Hill Start Assist to help you when the gradiant is a bit steep.
With the Duster AWD, Renault has also introduced a new colour - Amazon Green. The Duster AWD is priced at Rs. 11.89 Lakh (ex-showroom, Delhi) for the RxL variant and the top-of-the-line RxZ variant will come in at Rs. 12.99 Lakh (ex-showroom, Delhi). The Renault Duster AWD gets the same 1.5 litre diesel engine that powers its two-wheel drive sibling. It's a turbocharged enigne that produces 108bhp and 250Nm of turning force. Renault claims fuel efficiency of 19.72km/l for this engine.
