2018 Renault Captur vs 2019

What's the difference?

There is something genuinely refreshing about Renault’s honest admission that its teeny-tiny Captur is designed for life in the city, and only the city.

While plenty in the small SUV space paint these fantastical images of the off-road adventures awaiting potential owners (mainly to sell said customers complicated four-wheel drive systems they’ll never use), Renault appears to understand its owners are as likely to find themselves negotiating craters on the moon as they are some off-road track, so they don’t bother.

Which is why the Captur is exclusively front-drive. And there's no load-lugging diesel engine on offer, either. Instead, there’s a pair of tiny-capacity petrol engines to choose from. All of which makes perfect sense for a car that will only exist in the city.

The only real risk to all this is that if you only do one thing, you're going to want to be pretty bloody good at it. So for this test we opted for the top-spec Captur Intens model fitted with the bigger of the two engines. And we put it to work in the city.

The Renault Captur is stupendously, ridiculously popular… in Europe.

So popular, in fact, that it’s not quite enough to have just one Renault Captur, to they sell another one - a de-specified, Dacia-based Renault Kaptur – that looks exactly the same.

Bizarre. But then, the Captur is a bit bizarre. It’s as if it comes from an alternate dimension where style trumps practicality, and vibrant colours and tight dimensions are more important than, say, a cupholder.

The point is, in Australia at least, buying a French car tends to be a deliberate and not necessarily value-based choice. With so many keenly priced and well-specified Japanese and Korean competitors, a car like this requires a buyer who wants something genuinely different.

So, can the recently updated Captur appeal to buyers wanting something a little left of centre in one of Australia’s most hotly contested market segments, or does it play second-fiddle to the small SUV market leaders? I spent a week in one to find out.