Why we ran it: To see if the Clio is the heir apparent to the Ford Fiesta’s ‘default buy’ throne
Month 1 - Month 2 - Month 3 - Month 4 - Month 5 - Month 6 - Final report - Specs
Life with a Renault Clio hybrid: Final report
It's very rare that I get to keep a car for as long as I have this one. What great fortune, then, that it should turn out to be one of my favourite long-termers in eight years of doing this job, and one I have had no difficulty finding things to write about (unlike a fair few I could mention).
My Renault Clio hasn't been flawless, regrettably, as many of my past long-termers have been. It intermittently irritated me with rattles from the dashboard and driver's door; its stereo volume controls suffered a glitch that occasionally made me look like an ass in public; its Apple CarPlay integration tripped up a couple of times; and its parking sensors once went haywire. Yet despite all of that, I already miss it like an old friend.
Primary among its qualities for me was the fuel efficiency, and consequently also the cost efficiency, of Renault's E-Tech Full Hybrid powertrain, which combined a 1.6-litre four-cylinder petrol engine with an electric motor and a small drive battery by way of a unique transmission so fiendishly complex that I still have to refresh my memory every time I need to explain exactly how it works (which does give me some concerns about long-term reliability, but only time can tell on that front).
This resulted in 53.5mpg over the course of my 10,000 miles with the car, and it even refused to drop below 50mpg when two friends and I did a trip to Belgium that included some unrestricted stretches of autobahn, which is just incredibly impressive (thanks not least to it recuperating 24kWh of energy, as revealed by the trip computer, and while in 'D' mode rather than regen-heavy 'B').
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Sorry but did I miss how Mark got a new Clio for 29 pound a month.
I think he put down such a large deposit that it wasn't much less than the guaranteed future value, oh and with the APR 0.0% offer it meant there was minimal outstanding balance to cover
That will be the case. AutoExpress were recently promoting another low monthly cost deal, this time on the Arkana, but hardly mentioned the large deposit (over £7500 I think). I guess this is how people think about car purchases these days.
Personally I think the practice of selling on the basis of absurdly low PCP monthly payments should be outlawed - it's the total payments including deposit over the term that counts.
The same goes for manufacturers who quote mpg figures for plug-ins, while ignoring the electrical energy expended, it's just plain deceptive.
And incidentally, while I like hybrids (and even own one) I'd be very surprised if this Clio achieves anything like the promised 66mpg. There's only so much that braking energy recovery and subsequently re-deployment can do: Let's have some proper measurements autocar, and I don't mean dooooownhill with the wind behind trip computer readouts.