Renault Scala

And the badge engineering scores again. As most of the emerging markets, India was already known for making its own car variations, and now one more is unveiled. It’s no more than a restyle of a Nissan sedan, and it’s really easy to recognize which model of the partner brand was used. This strategy completes their compact cars line at that country, since the hatchback spot was filled with Nissan March, also sold as Micra and there as Renault Pulse, and, as it’s always expected, looks for joining the best of each manufacturer.

For those who aren’t familiar with that, the concept of selling one car under two or more brands is almost as old as common. It’s best moment was achieved around the ‘80s, when each manufacturer had at least one car sold around the world using it, like General Motors – only their “Project J” had about ten variations, among Buick, Chevrolet, Opel and even Cadillac, besides the other brands. But lately this strategy has to adapt itself, because the differences about size and style preferences and prices made almost impossibile to offer the exact same car to markets like France and Argentina, for example. In nowadays, it’s observed a sort of combinated strategy, which sails between creating a car to only one market and designing a global model, surely passing by an infinite number of intermediate solutions. Thus, one of the latest results of those studies is the sedan which appears here. We can observe the Renault/Nissan group’s decision of taking the Japanese sedan and selling it under the French brand, possibly due to its better influence there. However, it’s easy to see that this arrangement it not as flawless as its manufacturer can think.

Besides the fact that anyone who knows a little about cars recognizes the Versa, not to mention the entire specialized press, the Mumbai’s design center who did this redesign could make the biggest effort but it couldn’t ever turn into something harmonic. The Nissan model wasn’t already the best example of elegance at car designing, but Scala gets worse because it simply doesn’t look like a Renault and even like a Nissan. We can say its lights got nicer, with better-looking internal structure than the original ones, but that’s it. The enormous black part at the center of the front end got too visually heavy for the overall idea of delicacy of the original round, organic shapes. In this kind of restyling is very common to maintain the sides without substantial changes, so at this case it meant keeping that rear window cut which exchanges the not so bigger costs of adding a third window in order to leave a huge blank spot at the third volume. The rear end received a big metal bar which unites the tail lights and carries the car name right above the license plate spot – Why couldn’t it take a look at Fluence at the time of choosing a sedan to take inspiration of? Not to mention the (true) Renault sedan whose origin is a lot older but could fill this spot with no extra cost, Symbol.

It‘s not that Scala is a monster; some can even say it got better than Versa. But it‘s bad to see this really nice style identity started by the latest Renaults get broken by a face-lift which could be better done or even avoided. Obviously, the interior follows the outside impression: opening the door doesn't take your mind out of Versa at all. There still are the round shapes almost everywhere, but with the exception of the central console, which brings an island of square lines to that ocean of funny lines that can easily attract the children’s attention. However, this design has nothing that could take away its huge credit about the inner space. It still takes a lot of benefit from a modern project, and takes five occupants without problems. Besides that, it can receive several items of comfort, style and technology, such as 15” wheels and multimedia sound system. The Renault Scala will be sold at four trim levels: RxE and RxL will use the gasoline engine, an 1.5 16v with 98 hp, while Rx and RxZ can be found only with the diesel one, also an 1.5 but with 85 cv. Both engines come with a manual five-gear transmission.

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