Renault SUV Range

The best place to start for some professional advice is a transmission specialist. They’ll probably inspect the transmission in your car and will be able to work out whether it can be fixed or if it needs to be replaced.

If you do need a replacement CVT, there are three main ways to go. You could buy a brand new replacement CVT which is likely to be the most expensive course of action. The second alternative is to have the transmission shop recondition the one you already have. This will also be quite expensive.

The third option is to find a good, tested second-hand CVT from a wrecked Koleos and have that fitted. This will be by far the cheapest way to go. But the gamble with option three is that the same problems might happen again, and you’d be back to square one.

I agree that a 2016 model-year car is too new to be thrown away, but failures of CVT transmissions are more common than they should be. It’s something car makers need to look at when they consider future designs and engineering.

According to the official test, the Arkana has a combined (city and highway) consumption figure of 6.0 litres per 100km which is pretty decent for this type and size of vehicle. CarsGuide’s road test, however, showed that, like the vast majority of cars out there, the Renault will use a bit more than that in the real world. A mix of country, city and suburban work as well as a helping of highway and motorway driving netted a figure of 7.5 litres per 100km. Still pretty good, to be honest.

The other factor when considering running costs is the type of fuel required. Here, again, the Arkana scores well as it will happily run on the cheaper 91-octane fuel rather than the premium stuff.

It somewhat depends on which model Koleos we’re talking about. For some strange reason, both the two-wheel-drive and all-wheel-drive versions of the Koleos have the same towing capacity. Even stranger is the fact that the much torquier turbo-diesel version of the 2018 Renault has a lower towing limit than the petrol-engined version with its peakier powerplant.

So, on that basis, the turbo-diesel Koleos has a 1650kg braked trailer towing limit. Which neatly rules it out. The petrol version meanwhile, can legally tow 2000kg so theoretically, you could use it to tow an 1800kg caravan. In reality, though, the petrol Koleos won’t do so effortlessly or (as you’ve described it) easily. In fact, it’ll be just about at the limit in terms of its performance and braking and the CVT transmission will really be earning its keep on hills. To be honest, there are better choices for this type of use.