Renault Duster: Gone But Not Forgotten

The Duster wasn’t Renault’s first car in India. That was the Logan, made during their short-lived association with Mahindra, followed by the Fluence, Koleos and Pulse, the latter a re-badged Micra made at the new Renault-Nissan Alliance factory established outside Chennai. All of which were the appetisers before the Duster rolled out in 2012, receiving such an overwhelming response that production tripled from seven to twenty per hour in the first few months.

The Duster was launched with a 1.6-litre petrol but the party trick, the reason why it grabbed a 23 per cent market share in year one itself was the 1.5-litre K9K diesel. Offered in two states of tunes, 84bhp and 108.5bhp, there were no automatics at launch but it didn’t need it. Renault couldn’t make enough Dusters to meet demand and riding on the wave Nissan launched the Terrano in 2013, a rebodied Duster aimed at driving much-needed volumes Nissan’s way.

In 2014 came the AWD Duster equipped with independent multi-link suspension, 210mm ground clearance, 400mm water-wading depth, and deeply-impressive go-anywhere ability. This would always remain niche, never more than 4 per cent of overall volumes, but the halo effect on the rest of the range, which had already crossed the one lakh sales milestone, was extraordinary. In 2016 came the first major facelift addressing complaints around the cheap-and-cheerful interiors. The power window switches moved from the centre console to the doors, it got a new touchscreen infotainment, auto climate control and new upholstery. On the exterior there were new bumpers and wheels while on the powertrain front the diesel got a new AMT gearbox.

The 1.6 petrol was also pulled, replaced with Nissan’s 1.5-litre petrol with the option of a CVT. None of which was enough to fend off the challenge from the Creta, which knocked the wind out of the Duster’s sails. So what did Renault do? Two years later they launched the Captur – without doubt their single biggest product planning disaster. Instead of bringing in the second-generation Duster to take on the Creta, Renault inexplicably used the budget to engineer a new top-hat on the already-aging gen-1 Duster underpinnings. The ensuing marketing around French design flair fell on deaf years – buyers were no fools and the Captur was dead on arrival. Undeterred by the Captur’s disaster Nissan went and did the same thing a year later, though in all fairness the Kicks did have far better styling and a more comprehensively updated interior. Didn’t matter though. Nothing was going to swing buyers away from the Creta. The Kicks also bombed.

With the coffers running dry, Renault soldiered on with the Duster, applying another facelift in 2019. It was also the last year they’d offer the engine that was heart and soul of the Duster – Renault, again inexplicably, deciding against spending the money to upgrade the K9K diesel for 2020’s BS 6 emission norms. To compensate, the 1.3-litre turbo-petrol was introduced in 2020, an enthusiastic powertrain that played to the inherent ride and handling strengths of the original Duster. But there was no way that engine was going to sustain sales of what was once India’s undisputed bestselling SUV and in 2022 the plug was finally pulled on India’s first mid-size SUV.