Test drive by Renault Clio 5 doors 2001 - 2006 hatchback

Six to ten

I have a decent job and a stable salary, but for a very long time I could not afford to buy a normal car. All the time he took samples of the times of Ochakovsky and the submissions of Crimea from his fifth hands. They poured. With pain in my heart, I handed them to scrap metal. Now I'm tired of it, and I have already accumulated a little money. I want an inexpensive, but high -quality new car!
The problem of choice is tormented by anyone who wants to buy a car and is not going to lay out in vain. Our market is full of offers, sometimes very tempting, about the sale of one or another four -wheeled equipment, both new and not very. What to advise a person who decides to buy a new car and a disposal of 6 to 10 thousand dollars? I put myself in his place, and the hair in the donor zone stood on end of the options, it turned out to be too many, which significantly complicates the choice of great risk of mistake and listen to the spouse's chants about mediocre money. Let's try to figure it out. We call the three competitors completely unlike each other: our homeland is represented by the Kaliningrad Kia Rio and, of course, the VAZ-2112, and the Turkish-French beauty Renault Clio Symbol acts from the Basurmansk side. Two hatchbacks, former sedans, and one sedan, former hatchback.
KIA outwardly, due to the original back of the rear, it is more similar not to the hatchback, but to the station wagon. From the point of view of the present lines, an unconditional leader in our company. Large front headlights on a mowing hood and a massive bumper give the face of a Korean-Russian car a sports and brown-legged look. Original and feed with large lanterns, similar in shape to the Egyptian pyramids, and the fifth door with a break along the lower edge of the glass. Our dozen, despite the long 20 years from the development to the conveyor, with the advent of the fifth door began to look much more modern, but still a visual inconsistency of the semi -sports front and a thick heating violate the integrity of the picture. The French, too, did not look for heavy ways and simply attached a hollow back to the elegant nose of crumbs Clio. It turned out a lady who began to lose weight from his face, and then abandoned this lesson.
Under the hood, all machines have similar in volume, but gasoline engines different in characteristics and power. The Rio has a 16-valve engine with a volume of 1,500 cm3 with a capacity of 103 hp, in the Togliatti car is also a 16-valve 1.5-liter, but with a capacity of 94 hp, and, finally, Clio Symbol hides under the hood of an 8-valve engine with a volume of 1400 cm3 with a capacity of 75 hp (in the arsenal of the French there is a 16-valve engine of the same volume with a capacity of 97 hp).
Let's get inside. Kia Rio sample is inexpensive, but quite a high -quality machine. The salon is trimmed with soft plastic and a cloth, joints in the finger with thickness and burrs are not found. A gentleman's set of this modification consists of air conditioning, a power steering, a driver's pillow and an immobilizer. There were no electric drives and the central castle in our car, but are possible on more expensive modifications. The instrument panel is typically Asian: compact, with all the necessary dials, buttons and handles. Dials form a visual eight, it is easy and pleasant to read the information. The beard is given to three microclimate adjustment handles, audio training, electronic watches and smoking accessories. A chubby 4-spacecraft does not overlap devices due to the lack of adjustments. The steering wheel itself is quite pleasant to the touch and is made of a material that prevents sweating. It is convenient to get a driver’s seat with my 182 cm in just a few seconds. The back and pillow are adjusted in five directions. There is both tolerable lateral support and an adjustable lumbar roller. You can live in the back seat too, only the head rests just on the place where the roof falls to the fifth door. Fans of Big-Macs will be crowded in front and behind: they will constantly touch the handle of the Communist Party, then the neighbor’s shoulder. The narrow opening of the luggage compartment and the lack of useful containers are upset, and in general, the trunk for the hatchback is quite roomy.
In a set of tools for the VAZ-2112, I would definitely turn on the file and a set of supra-Filles. What for? In order for the owner to independently remove countless burrs, bullying and other joys of the Russian quality of production. The interior of the twelfth is a kind of plastic puzzle for children over 18 years of age. The instrument panel consists of eight fragments made of plastic of varying degrees of softness and shade, and if something suddenly falls out (and it will necessarily fall), then it will not be easy to return this fragment to the place. The standard equipment includes windows of all glasses and a central lock. In order to justify the high price, dealers forcibly install the signaling system of the Crocodile Super Fititer 3000, do not come, wiping!, Electric drive of mirrors or heating the front seats and anticoros. Moreover, everything is watered with an anti -corrosion composition, including a plastic spoiler on the fifth door and seats. It is almost impossible to buy a twelfth without these useful things. Nevertheless, there is also enough positive in the salon. A very good thing is a combination of instruments from VDO with pleasant green backlight and the same greenish arrow hours. The steering column is adjustable in height, and the driver’s seat is hard and comfortable in German. The rear sofa is ready to accept three citizens of medium height and complexion. Persons taller above average will inevitably elapse their heads in the ceiling, and full people even together will feel more than constrained. The trunk is not very large, but wide. A small loading height allows you to load heavy things without problems.
Renault Clio Symbol in the basic configuration RN is deprived of everything that is possible and impossible. There are no handrails on the ceiling, a glove box, a central lock and head restraints in the back seat in the cabin. All this is on other, more expensive modifications. But there is a driver’s pillow and immobilizer. The interior of the cabin is made of high -quality materials and fabrics. The compact instrument panel contains a speedometer and two signs plus an electronic odometer and watch. The driver of the symbol (as well as his passengers) must have a height of not higher than 185 cm and a small leg size. Otherwise, he himself will feel constant discomfort, and he will not give others life. If in the car there are four average citizens in growth and weight, then there will be no problems, and do not have to rest against the ceiling from behind. In the wide luggage compartment (for some reason without any upholstery), you can transport another passenger (which we, excuse me, did when we first met Clio Symbol).
For the climax of our road test test, we went to an empty suburban highway with long straight and steep turns. Kia Rio, rustling with all sixteen valves, starts quite vigorously. The programs are turned on clearly, and the soft clutch grasp when the pedal is almost in the floor. The car is confidently accelerating and travels in the entire speed range, but from 3,000 to 3500 there is a failure that must be wait. When entering the protracted ascent, the engine has to help the transition to a lower gear. On long straight lines after 90 km/h, the RIO hydraulic wrap loses its position and transfers control to the driver: reactions on the steering wheel become sharp, even unnecessarily. The detour of obstacles turns into a fairly serious test for the nerves, since the rear axle is clearly underloaded, and the wheels even with easy discharge of gas willingly go to the skid. The suspension is stiff, any coating defect beats on the body and head. The brake pedal is exemplary informative. The degree of inhibition depends on the force of pressing, and during emergency braking, Kia freezes like a statue from Easter Island. The character of her (car, not statues!) Is not easy to describe. Hard suspension and acute steering are combined in it with a powerful but weak -willed engine that can upset the novice Schumacher. Such a Asian cocktail of tiger milk with the addition of vanilla.
VAZ-2112, creaking with plastic, went to the start. Touching from a place on new Lada a wonderful plot for a television program. The clutch is squeezed out, it's time to turn on the transmission, and it turns on the third time and with two hands at once. With grief in half, the car is touching. Subsequent acceleration shows that all gears are included with a giant effort. And then the last jerk before leaving directly, and at this moment the gas pedal is sticking ... The engine yells heart -rendingly, on the tachometer far beyond 6000 revolutions, and in the language nothing but the non -normative pearls of the Yuza Aleshkovsky era. The pedal returns to its sock boot, and the engine calms down. It’s good that the highway is empty ... to enter a turn at high speed and walking around the moose at the twelfth is unsafe. It seems that the steering wheel scratching the hands is not connected with the chassis of the car, and the suspension is not attached to the body, but simply dangles like Dennis Tito, in the airless Moscow protracting. Having calmed down a little, it was possible to find out that the 16-valve engine has a good thrust in the lower speed range and does not require frequent switching from the driver. The brakes are also good, quite informative and effective.
The rest is another disappointing disappointment. No, not in the car, she would be very good if she was collected with her hands growing from the upper body. Maybe we still came across a copy collected on December 31 after the program time? Give me God ... Clio Symbol, neatly and slowly, accelerates to the maximum maximum. There is no tachometer, and the limit of acceleration in each transmission is determined by the revolutionary limiter, a cure, as always, at the most inopportune moment. The 75-horsepower engine allows you to not change gears for a long time and manipulate only an accelerator. You can go in the fifth gear of 60 km/h, and at the end of a protracted rise, press the gas, and the car, as if nothing had happened, will begin to accelerate confidently. And this is a simple 8-valve motor! Light steering with good feedback, clarity of inclusion of gears all this is plus a French car. The suspension works just great: real French, moderately tough and comfortable. Even the most serious road irregularities are practically not transferred to the body and passengers.
What to choose? Eternal designer VAZ-2112 or Rio? Or maybe an inexpensive Euro-Turkish Clio Symbol? Vasik is scared away by quality (more precisely, its absence) and clearly overpriced. I believe in the Kaliningrad assembly of KIA unconditionally, but I am not ready to immediately spend so much money on it. But Symbol on credit for two years is exactly what a reasonable Russian person is looking for reasonable imported money ...
 
Maxim Rakitin
Photo by Alexander Nozdrin
 
How do they look:
Nikita Rozanov
 
Outside:
It just so happened that design assessment is usually attributed to the category of subjective. However, in this case, you begin to doubt it very much, so unanimously negatively all reacted to the design of the little Synault Symbol sedan. It is curious that Renault in the form of a hatchback is a very stylish and harmonious car, while artificially increased to it, the volume of isolated trunk is by no means evidence of unprofessionalism of the Patrick Le Keman stylist team or the inferiority of those who like it. Sorry, this is a modern design, and this is exactly what follows the function, the market and the fashion of the countries of any of the worlds: the first, second or third.
There are also few sincere admirers of the VAZ-2110 style, because the twelfth is a modification of a not quite successful drawing of dozens and, most importantly, its morally outdated shape (VAZ-2110 was developed in 1987, and, for example, Renault Clio ten years later). The Korean Rio looks most modern, and in some fragments of this car you can even see the advanced style of New Edge, and in the plasticity of the main volume, new -fangled trends in the mixing of the composition of a sports hatchback and a functional station wagon. Although the front cars are deprived of any constant branded features, their faces are characteristic and easily remembered. Silhouettes all the more. The large rear spoiler of the vase looks archaic again, since the modern aerodynamic setting of an ordinary hatchback is usually more invisible and organically integrated mainly in the volume of form.

Results:
Kia Rio is quite stylish and integral design, precisely associated with the purpose and class of the car. However, the silhouette of the car is too dynamic, and the shape of the body in its back loses rationality. Renault Clio Symbol memorable and friendly appearance of the car corresponds to its purpose well. The unusual side of the side silhouette is on the verge of a foul, which, however, may like it. The VAZ-2112 Losses from morally outdated design can not compensate for either the other type of body or the appearance in the arsenal of the style of parts such as a powerful rear spoiler. But thanks to this, the style of the Donor car VAZ-2110 looks a little fresh.
Inside:
The interiors of the entire three are very different from the well-free Symbol style to a technocratic-in vaz. The RIO instrument panel is perhaps the most modern both in form and plastic, and in the philosophy of its organization. The emphasis on the workplace of the driver is tactfully, but stylish. In comparison with it, the design of the instrument panel of the twelfth, in its care of ergonomics and the functioning of various devices and switches, is too intrusive too much. Today, all the same for a long time has been done inconspicuous for style and more humane in relation to man. With the steering wheel, the trouble is at all, and its shape and graphics on the central signal button resemble the 70s of the last century. The upholstery of the doors is both in design and in the technology of the entire three is approximately the same as the same form and the finish of the seats are the same. Symbol is still distinguished, the colorful upholstery of which is quite consistent with the shocking silhouette.

Results:
Kia Rio is stylish, modern and quite consistent with the rank of the first family-universal family-sports orientation. Even the predominance of plastic interior in the interior does not seem to be a shortage. Everything is of high quality and whole enough. Renault Clio Symbol is amazing, but the interior and appearance of this car are very organic, and even the excessive accent of the central console and the unrestrained color of the seats’s upholstery are fully consistent with the trunk attached to the hatchback. VAZ-2112 in style is an interior from another car. In addition, so the designers of the first half of the 80s imagined the car and a separately executed combination of devices. The style of the beginning of the 21st century is different, at least in terms of quality of execution.
 

Source: Cars