SPY PICS: New Renault Arkana may not be an Arkana

Despite only entering production in 2019 and arriving Down Under in facelifted form just last year, it seems there’s an all-new Renault Arkana on the way.

Our spy photographers snapped a camouflaged Arkana development vehicle at a German service station this week.

Riding on exactly the same alloy wheels as the current model, the disguised prototype clearly has the same high-riding silhouette as the current model but has adopted an inverted headlight and daytime running light design with the headlights set low on the vehicles ‘cheeks’.

While elaborate camo disrupts the finer details, the usually linked DRLs then extend upwards and flick in towards the hidden badge.

At the rear we find a completely different scenario; the familiar linked tail-light clusters have been replaced by two independent arrangements, albeit with the familiar C-shaped signature.

Typically we would assume such a vehicle to be a mid-lifecycle facelift and that would roughly line up with Renault’s typical seven-year model life, but sources out of Europe have hypothesised the Arkana will be killed off and replaced with a fresh offering based on the new Renault Austral. The current Arkana is based on the Renault Captur.

“The most plausible scenario is that Renault will kill the current Arkana in 2024 and replace it by a new model based on the more modern Austral SUV,” the sources said.

“The French make has already announced it will come with an Austral coupe – and it seems quite unlikely the maker wants to have two SUV coupes in their portfolio.”

If this proves to be the case then the next Arkana – or its replacement – will score a fresh platform, new engines and maybe even a new nameplate.

We’ll keep our ear to the ground and an eye out for any more updates on this unconventional lifecycle, given the Arkana’s been on sale here for less than a year.

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