Performance

Renault Pulse reviewed!

Slot the gear into first and you know the Renault-Nissan Alliance is a force to reckon with. The leather wrapped gear knob fits snugly in hand and a neither short nor long throw, slots the cogs in place. Hooliganism is not just the premise of petrol engines, at least not in this day and age. The 1.5 litre Renault dCi K9K engine is smooth, responsive and as you would expect from a Renault diesel, torquey. Even at higher rpms, though you can obviously hear the engine working furiously, the insulation does its job and at no point is the noise level high enough to inconvenience occupants. While the mill does not have a problem revving to the upper reaches of the rev range, we would suggest you spare pedestrians and motorists outside the agony of diesel clatter and stick to sane rpms.

Renault Pulse : 1.5 Litre 64 bhp Renault dCi engine

The sane engine speeds will also help the Pulse give fantastic mileage, probably the most convincing reason why you would get yourself one in the first place. Driving mostly in the city, we managed an average upwards of 12 kpl, which of course included some spirited driving. Eerily like a naturally aspirated diesel, the Pulse shows no signs of turbo lag with all the torque available right off the bat. A car primarily optimized for city driving, the torque is delivered linearly with no surprises anywhere. On the topic of city driving, the Pulse seems to have an Easter Egg that is the unintended ‘creep’ function that makes driving in bumper to bumper traffic easy. Most cars do have the tendency to crawl ahead slow-w-w-wly without throttle input but the Pulse takes it to a whole new level. Modulate the clutch and you should be rolling along fine in ( warning : cliched expression ahead ) choc-a-bloc traffic without ever having to worry about fine inputs to the throttle. Unlike some of the others diesels, the light clutch in the Pulse makes it easy. What this means is, unless you take a hot iron and brand yourself ‘total amateur’ there is no way you would stall this car. Not on inclines, not in harrowing I-just-learnt-to-drive-I’m-not-up-for-this-kind-of-traffic situations. Again, the Pulse tempted us into trying to find out how fast we could go without so much as feathering the throttle. We managed around 40 kph in 5th gear! Dear Sir/Madam, another useless tip for your reading pleasure, and kind perusal.

Renault Pulse : Pedals

The pedals are slightly closer than we would have wanted to and as mentioned in a Micra review elsewhere on the internet, the pedals do seem slightly offset to the right. Only slightly. Something this correspondent had got accustomed to towards the end of the day. Ah, the steering is a thing of wonder. The EPS unit is very light, but it weighs down at higher speed. The steering makes manouevering in the city child’s play, as is parking. We did notice sometimes though, on turns that require only the slightest turning of the wheel, the steering needs to be coaxed towards the end to return to normal position.

Renault Pulse : Central AC VentsRenault Pulse : Side AC Vents

Towards the later part of the evening, we noticed the windows, camera lenses and our insides fogging up. A blatant display of the air conditioning equipment’s competence of course, and incompetence on my part for having set the temperature at 18° and then having completely ignored it. For a car that is so smart, you cannot blame us for hoping it could set the temperature based on ambient temperature and order burger with fries while at it.

I might as well as be done with another gripe I have with the equipment in the car. The 4 speaker audio system has enough bass that you can live with it, and delivers clear vocals and beautiful wailing guitar solos. What had me banging my head on the horn pad was the Volume knob on the head unit that works perfectly when you turn it, but press on it you’ll see the system turns itself off. Conventionally, the volume button when pressed displays options to tune the Fader, Balance and other audio enhancing settings, but in the Pulse the system just turns itself off! Not a major issue when you buy the car and live with it, but when you have the car for less than a week, these things tend to start driving you up the wall.

Renault Pulse : Volume knob Renault Pulse : Front speaker

There’s no USB port on the unit. You’ll have to either go back to the stone age and start burning CDs or you can AUX your way into the system.

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, the Pulse has been engineered to make living with it easy. While part of its is accomplished by the excellent diesel mill sitting in the engine bay, the rest is taken care of by the McPherson struts up front and torsion beam at the rear that handle the suspension duties.

Renault Pulse Review : AlloysRenault Pulse : MacPherson Strut

The suspension systems are mounted on sub frames to help isolate road noise, vibration and harshness. Since the V-Platform is engineered to provide optimum rigidity, the suspension can work with the tuned chassis efficiently to provide more accurate steering. There’s also less dive under braking and pitch under acceleration, says Renault. There’s also an anti-roll bar at either end to aid handling.

The suspension which has been softened for Indian conditions, offers fantastic ride quality with bumps and pot holes being dispensed with without any sweat. This also means the Pulse, essentially a urban commuter finds it slightly uncomfortable taking corners at speed. Let the speedo needle wander too far and your confidence sags and you feel you are better off not doing it. Braking is taken care of by discs up front and drums at the rear. The braking is there but the feedback not so much. We did try slamming the brakes at around 80-90kph and the vehicle stayed true to its line.

The Renault Pulse also has an underbody that has been designed to improve airflow and increase downforce. This in addition with the witchcraft on the roof gives the Pulse a coefficient of drag around 0.33

Light as she can be

If the Pulse was based on the previous generation Micra, it would have been atleast 35 kgs heavier! The V-Platform, key elements of which are strength and lightness is responsible for cutting much of the flab off the Pulse. The 41 litre fuel tank is 2.2kgs lighter than that in the last generation Micra, the exhaust system no longer has a central silencer, reducing weight by 3.2kgs and the front suspension system is lighter by 9kgs. The roof with the boomerang grooves is 2kg lighter. An interesting statistic would be that the Pulse and its look alike cousin have 18 per cent fewer components than similarly sized cars, for example the dashboard is made of just 28 parts instead of more than 50.

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