Making Life Easy R

The Renault Kwid AMT ups the convenience quotient, making it a close to perfect city car.

- Sarmad Kadiri 

THE RENAULT KWID HAS BEENa surprise package. No one expected a small car from a European automobile maker to be such a huge success in India, giving stiff competition to the mighty Maruti Alto. It must have been a pleasant surprise to the French company, too, for the Kwid hugely contributed in helping the company breach the one lakh sales mark earlier this year.

There were a few more surprises in store for us as we drove the new Renault Kwid Easy R recently. Since it comes with an automated manual transmission (AMT), we weren’t really expecting a clutch pedal... so no surprises there. But Renault have done away with the gear-stick completely, replacing it with a bottle holder, making the centre console unusually spacious.

And to select from among the three modes — Drive, Neutral and Reverse — you get a dial on the dashboard. Yes, a dial. Like the one small cars have to turn on the air-conditioning, only larger. I told you the car is full of surprises.

The large dial can be rotated anti-clockwise to select Drive and clockwise to engage the reverse gear, Neutral being in between the two. Just press the brake pedal and twist the dial and you’re ready to go without any drama or sound of the cogs getting engaged.

Renault have introduced the AMT only in the Kwid 1.0-litre which is good for 68 PS and 91 Nm. That, too, only in the top-of-the-line RxT(O) variant because those looking for the ease of an AMT will also be keen to have other convenient features such as a touchscreen, satellite navigation and Bluetooth connectivity.