New Koleos rushing to Australia

The yet-to-be revealed second-generation Renault Koleos SUV will be rushed on to sale in Australia in the second half of 2016 only months after it breaks cover.

It could even beat the fourth-generation Megane small car on sale in Australia even though that car was revealed at the Frankfurt show this year and motoring.com.au sampled it recently at the global launch in Portugal, Megane has September/October timing for its Australian reveal.

Renault is staying tight-lipped on the exact timing of the Koleos reveal, but the smart money is on the Beijing show in April in SUV-mad China.

Renault is making a big push in China and building its first manufacturing plant. Koleos is currently its biggest seller.

The quick turnaround from launch to Australian sale will be aided by a short supply line, as Koleos is built by Samsung in South Korea. Meganes will come from Palencia in Spain.

Spy shots of the new Koleos have revealed a substantially bigger car than the current model, while Renault has confirmed it will be 130mm longer with a choice of five and seven seats.

It also will be a substantially more characterfully-styled car, courtesy of the Laurens Van Den Acker overhaul of the company’s design language that started with the Clio in 2012

The new Koleos will be based on the same Renault-Nissan alliance CMF (Common Module Family) architecture as the similarly-sized Nissan X-TRAIL.

An increasing number of alliance models are being based on CMF, including the Renault Kadjar SUV, which is a close relation of the Nissan QASHQAI and therefore roughly the same size as the current Koleos.

The Kadjar has so far been ruled out for Australian introduction. Renault Australia managing director Justin Hocevar said the arrival of the new Koleos and the physical space it created in the range would not prompt a rethink.

That makes him a rare local car company executive not grabbing every SUV he can despite buyers flocking to the high-riding wagons.

“I know it seems to be going against the grain and as much as I want to say ‘yes we want to do it’, I just want to take a measured approach to getting our business right and not trying to run before we walk,” Hocevar told motoring.com.au.

“Once we have launched Koleos and we have some traction there we can always reassess it. But we shouldn’t push Koleos up into another category of vehicle when we can position it well to cover a market where people could quite easily go either way.

“I would like to think we can position Koleos well to maximise our opportunities across that segment because people will happily go up in size if the price is right.

“But if you push the price up too much to get another car in you might miss the opportunity, spend twice the money on marketing both, stocking both and diversity and all the challenges that come with that.”

Hocevar acknowledged that alliance partner Nissan Australia managed to offer two compact SUVs in the X-Trail and Qashqai successfully.

But he made the point that with 11,500 sales expected for Renault and around 67,000 for Nissan in 2015, the two companies were dealing with very different business challenges.

“We are not at that scale and volume and market acceptance yet to justify that,” he said.

Koleos was first launched in Australia in 2008 and has become a bastion of growing sales over the last four years, along with Clio, Captur and Megane.

The current Koleos is offered in a range from $28,490 to $47,240. It is available with petrol and turbo-diesel four-cylinder engines and with front and all-wheel drive.

In its final full year on sale to the end of November sales are down 12.5 per cent to 1332, putting it 13th in segment by sales. The Mazda CX-5 is number one with 23,219 sales.