CHEVROLET NIVA test drive since 2009 SUV

Chevy Niva against Renault Duster

SUVs for 500 thousand rubles. Meeting of hits of the Russian market. The main prize to the one who squeezes a tear at the jury ... The excitement around the cheap French model reached the limit. It is worth leaving Duster for five minutes on the street, as a crowd gathers around.
Therefore, we are in a hurry to use it in the Drive Duel. A special, but for this comparative test as an opponent for Renault, we have chosen a model that passers -by for a long time do not see over, and the manufacturer updates ten years every ten years. In fact, why is she already a bestseller, everyone decides money. But now she will have more difficult.

Scrap metal and silage
Renault Duster and Chevrolet Niva have nothing in common except the price. Frenchman crossover. Domestic car is a universal SUV with a reduced gear. But the average consumer of the SUV is, as life shows, anyway. He buys an image, dreams of traveling, and reluctantly moves off the asphalt (of course, you, dear reader, do not relate to these average customers).

Cracability of the thing is ambiguous. Niva has it much better than Duster. But in reality, it fails you
However, back to our rivals. Duster is a beginner climber. He just began to climb the mountain of the Russian automobile market. The old experimental climbing Niva has long conquered this peak and has been going down from it for several years, slowly, lazily and reluctantly. Having the goal of creating unique, the French made their crossover from a Romanian car. Saved on showers. They used old plastic bags. They paid with suppliers cards with a view of the Sena. The Americans did not bother. They primitively exchanged the world -famous (except jokes from Finland to South America) brand Niva. The enthusiasm received secret technologies for the production of compact SUV from scrap and silver. They bought a penny of Pyatakov and in a roundabout way to our market. The approaches are different, and the result is one - the price per piece in the region of 500 thousand rubles.

Fun starts. Renault is more impulsive and tears from a frozen place. Sometimes it helps

The depth of viscosity.
Chevy in snow porridge asks for a reduced gear, there is not enough traction
However, in the end, the French French beat. For Niva, the named price is quite real. Full package, upper equipment. Duster for this money is offered without ABS and air conditioning. Is there a joke, in the summer to ride in the same suspenders, and in the winter to slow down, clutching with your hands on the lampposts? In principle, you get used to it, but there is another difficulty: there are no electric windows. There are no glasses in the language of a modern motorist. Despite this conflict, the title is the cheapest SUV of all time and peoples stuck precisely to Renault, and not to Chevrolet. With the same success, it was possible to tear off the upholstery from the Suzuki SX-4 salon, remove the spare wheel, take the trunk door to the category of options and announce the release of the super-budget model. Fortunately, no one is capable of such a Gauls.

Vintage.
A huge mobile of the first Ericsson models would be perfect for this surroundings

Assembly of antiquities. Antique speed -steamer

Authenticity. Folklore buttons of electric windows

Balcony. The rear seats are raised, which gives a good overview to passengers

Handmade.
Upholstery is fixed by folk non -cloaks
Thriller, musical, melodrama
Climbing inside Chevrolet, we can immediately understand that the car is made on the banks of the Great Russian River: there is a Russian spirit, there it smells of Russia. The aroma of Syzran plastic is not destroyed by anything, even a toilet duckling. A blind and deaf person also guesses. One has only to touch the windows buttons and heating the seats. These are unique toggle switches, they probably take them somewhere in abandoned warehouses from Gorbachev and Perestroika. You can generally write a mystical thriller about the production of NIVA. Sinful spare parts are languishing inside it, they are serving time for past crimes. Their punishment began even at birth, when AvtoVAZ supplier sculpted them in the cold workshop with trembling hands of the overwhelming migrant workers. However, the melodrama will go: the unfortunate, deprived of love, the pieces of iron were in the body of an aging model. Poor Niva! She would have to rest in the dressing room, but her, strainingly grunting, suffering from depression and other female diseases, forced her to reach the ring with an impudent foreigner of French origin. You can also a musical drama: each movement of the model is filled with fatigue and in vain hopes all its aggregates ask for something plaintively. The handout howls a difficult share. The stove rustles, as if sucking fallen foliage. Bridges with cardans knock like a hitch of railway wagons. The hydraulic wrap in the extreme positions of the steering wheel sipit, like a snake on a hunt. Not a single car on the planet, even the Chinese itself, has such a number of sounds.

Failure.
Climate regulators are not permissible low

Style.
The cheapness does not stick out

Four-wheel drive.
We have already seen a similar puck on Nissan

Without spectacles.
The rear passengers sit below than in the competitor

Trunk. The transformation is easy, in one appointment
Chick-chick flew into a penny
What is Renault? The French car after Chevrolet seemed perfect to me. I found only one drawback - the sound signal of the turn signal. The French, buying a ringtone, found that the copyright to the good old chic chick flew into a penny, and took a cheap vile peak peak. The sound seems to be hung up with a knife on the glass. Otherwise, Duster is impeccable. The younger in the French line of a 1.6-liter motor with a capacity of 102 horsepower allows Niva with its only eighty-axle 1.7-liter unit to spill in the tail.

Swing.
None of the duelists have electronic assistants
I sat in Chevy. Ivan was in Duster and left me like a pillar. It was hard for my old woman. It cannot quickly promote a pile of heavy metal and two cardans, tied to a permanent all -wheel drive, it cannot. Duster, frankly, is also not a sprinter, but its four -wheel drive is connected on demand and allows you to accelerate on two front ones. It’s easier for him. At the same time, the Frenchman’s 4x4 mode can be forced, and he, like Niva, begins to row all four. Then a little thought arises, but it is treated with a primitive technique: in the field of the gas pedal to the floor and do not let go. Chevy does not help such medicines. She has a response to the pedal so pulled out that you need to radically change the driving style from the racing to nausea.

Give a stock.
If there is no room for a run, Niva quickly sits down

Charger. Dick a compact SUV is a pleasure: quickly and without tension
The loser did not ask for help
At that moment, when the Frenchwoman already completely took possession of my heart and I already wondered how dumb to look my summer promenade in the absence of air conditioning and with an inexpensive Chinese set of ABS acquired in the market, we traveled on our couple along the bottom of an abandoned quarry. Ivan was very worried that we would get stuck, and after a few minutes his Niva was already sitting in the snow on the wheel arches. I traveled to Renault and marveled how good it goes through snowdrifts and stiffened land. Then we changed, and I immediately planted Chevrolet in a deep rut. It’s hard to scare the off-road, but there are nuances. On the one hand, she does not have enough strength for a good jerk to urgently free herself from the ambush site. On the other hand, its good geometric patency, low transmission and suspension, concealing almost any bumps and pit, quickly relax the driver and pushes into rash acts.

Leisurely. The power of the Chevy 80 horsepower engine. Acceleration to a hundred takes 19 seconds
Niva provoked to storm the areas where it is useless to stick on Duster. The weak multi -disc couple of connection of all -wheel drive Duster is prone to rapid overheating and, in principle, is not intended for off -road.
Logan suspension damps the soil less effectively than Russian, and the geometry of the Renault body, although worthy, is not up to the rival level. The off -road round ended in the most paradoxical way. The winner of the off-rock part of the Chevrolet was dug up almost all the time, and the loser Renault traveled as a walk and did not ask for help.

Nimble. The power of the Renault Duster 102 l. With. Acceleration to 100 km/h 13.5 s
Gentlemen Act
Duster could become the winner of this test ... after a couple of years, after we look at his reliability in Russian conditions. We will make sure that the French saved only on the sound of chick and air conditioning, and not on the quality of bearings and the strength of the suspension. It is a cut above the rival to decorate the salon and design the front panel. Its salon is more convenient and practical. On the go, the Frenchman is faster, in management is easier and more adequate. But to go on it, for example, to Surgut or Perm is already scary. Niva, although unreliable, is subject to quick repair at any end of our huge homeland, and you can understand yourself if the breakdown is not fatal. It looks like the truth? Not really. This is a search for excuses. In fact, Chevrolet Niva wins, because we are not able to offend the old woman. It would be inhuman.

Geometry. Chevy’s wheelbase is shorter. On off -road is a plus
Caution, technical details
The engine in Chevrolet Niva is the same, with a volume of 1.7 liters, 80 liters. With. The anterior suspension is a double -leaf independent, and the rear spring dependent, on four jet levers and Panar's thrust. A handout with an interdessual differential and lowering gear. Articulation and suspension passages allow you to feel confidently on any non -excessive off -road. And the tires increased to 215/65 R16 and ABS have significantly improved handling and control on asphalt.
Duster suspension is completely independent. This made it possible to surpass NIVA by clearance, but only nominally. Where Duster draws the whole abdomen at once, Niva only apparently concerns the rear axle gearbox. The lack of a handout is partially compensated by a very short first gear. Question: Is this enough at full load? The payload of Duster is more than 500 kg versus 450 kg in Chevy, while Niva itself is almost one hundred kilograms. The Frenchman is equipped with an ESP system, but Niva is not. Duster does not have an interdosseous differential, its role is played by a coupling, which, in conditions of frequent operation on impassability, is hardly possible for a long time.
Author: Dmitry Leontyev, photo of Alexander Ortnova-Baranov

Source: Magazine 4x4 [July /2012]