Renault Korea released the Grand Koleos late in 2024, and those prepared to fork out a bit more can get the limited-edition Esprit Alpine model, with 1,955 planned.
There has been a bit of unwarranted flak from other media about the fact this is a rebodied Geely Xingyue L, usually along the lines of how ineffective the disguise is. I disagree: the Renaultification of the sheetmetal is incredibly well done, the glasshouse is distinctive, especially the sixth light, and it hides the common components remarkably well (such as the front wings and headlights). No, the flak should be reserved for what’s shown in the image at top: Renault Korea’s tagline, present on board the Grand Koleos: ‘Born in France, made in Korea’. Last I looked, Hangzhou was not in France. The Korean manufacture, however, should rightly be celebrated.
The French are going through a tough time, having faltered in China for years. With Chinese manufacturers mostly strong these days, they don’t need foreign partners as much, certainly not ones that they themselves have surpassed. Peugeot, Citroën and DS are victims of this.
Renault makes the Dacia Spring there, yet Chinese new-car buyers are so affluent that a lot of made-in-China product is not even sold on the domestic market. They’re strictly for export.
However, it is ramping up R&D efforts in the Middle Kingdom, and a new EV is on the cards, and teaming up with Geely—which already owns 34 per cent of the Korean operation—is the smartest thing it has done since the Renault–Nissan Alliance was first formed. The 2022 agreement to do a JV in powertrains makes sense, especially with China’s overall lead in EVs, but things are very quiet there. The Grand Koleos is the first sign in a while that something’s been happening.
The worst car I drove in 2024 was this, the base Toyota Yaris.
I don’t have the most complimentary things to say about the Mitsubishi RVR—ASX in most export markets, including New Zealand—but at least Mitsubishi has had an excuse. It’s been a terribly run outfit that was implicated in a safety cover-up in 2000, and before it fully recovered from that, it was caught cheating on emissions in Japan in 2016. Both times the Japanese government had to raid them. So when you are on a weak footing, you don’t have the money to develop class leaders, and the ASX is symptomatic of the bad old years in between. It drives like a bigger 2002 Colt and it gets by on a cheap price. It hobbles along with more facelifts than Joan Rivers. But at least you can understand why it isn’t good, and Mitsubishi is right to sell it cheaply.
Toyota, the world’s number-one car maker, has no such excuse. It’s done so many things right to get there. But the base Yaris (GX in New Zealand) has a transmission that whines more than a tech bro and jumps more than Colin Jackson, and is completely uninspired behind the wheel. The interior is stripped-down, even more than you might expect in the mid-2020s. It has its hybrid powertrain and fuel economy going for it, and the cheeky styling, looking like a rally car that’s calmed down, distinguishes it in the B-segment. Yes, it’s also cheap, but then, so are Suzuki Swifts, MG 3s and Kia Prides and Stonics, and their makers don’t treat smaller wallets with the same contempt.
The base Auris was one of the worst C-segment cars we tested in earlier years, too, yet we remember those halcyon days of the original front-drive Corolla—even the base XL hatch—and how it made the opposition all weak at the knees.
Both show that you can trade off goodwill earned decades ago for a long, long time.
Jack Yan is founder and publisher of Lucire.
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