Renault isn’t making a song and dance about its arrival in India. In fact, it isn’t doing anything that most brands would do to announce their intentions. Its marketing, advertising and public relations pundits tell you that service is high on its agenda, by which they mean sales, after-sales, maintenance and what have you. Peace of mind and product attributes, rather than brand tom-tomming, seem to be its selling points.
This has been the case since the launch of the Fluence and the tradition seems to have continued with the Koleos as well. Like with the Fluence, Renault has followed a very unusual product strategy. Where the Fluence is only available in basic trim for the diesel and is fully loaded for the petrol, the Koleos comes in just one, fully-loaded trim. The competition may have two-wheel drive, four-wheel drive, automatic, manual and other trims, but Renault believes people in this segment would rather have it all than get a piecemeal, price-cut option. One could say Renault is ditching volumes, but then again this segment is too limited to really worry about incremental changes. It has bigger worries on its mind — like the hatchback codenamed B58 that some are suggesting could be the Modus, or the Duster SUV — the first true SUV in the Rs 7 lakh to Rs 10 lakh segment since the Mahindra Scorpio nearly a decade ago. Or the Nissan Sunny-based C-segment saloon, all of which should be on sale in 2012.
You could call the Koleos a bit of a stop-gap measure then, as Renault chalks out its distribution and after-sales strategy. After all, what use are a few dozen dealerships when you want to sell thousands of cars each month? At Rs 22.99 lakh, ex-showroom, Delhi, the Koleos is probably good enough for a few hundred units each month over the few hundred Fluences Renault racks up each month. Its claim to fame is that it’s based on the Nissan X-Trail’s C platform, but unlike the Nissan, it’s assembled at Renault’s facility at Oragadam, just off Chennai.