KLUGER
Test
The latest car we have had on overnight loan for testing is the
new Kluger Grande 4wd/AWD.
The marketing has uprated it in all catergories and so we were
eager to compare it to our 4800 Patrol and the Disco3 Porsche4wd Prado and others we have had recently.
First impressions often count and this was not good as we couldn't
figure out how to lock it after taking delivery. This is the top of
range model and its gone all electronic and has no key any more.
When your close to it it knows and requires having both the brake
footbrake and start button operated in special sequence to activate it.
It took fully 5 minutes to figure out how to lock it, as I had apparently applied the foot operated handbrake after pressing the stop engine button and not before.
We never did figure out how to have the radio on without the engine running.
My childish streak turned up the
seat heating to maximum and it took an unsuspecting wife quite a while to figure out what was happening.
The electronics are everwhere and appear of good qualiy unlike the Disco 3 we hawe did like the fact that when you put the car into reverse the huge screen auto-switched to a reversing camera, which worked at night.
This car has grown and is as wide and long as our Patrol and at 2055kg its not much lighter either. It now has a very credible 206mm ground clearance.
Sitting in the car though was very much like in a submarine with a huge dash/bonnet and high sides making visibilty worst than the Patrols.
Driving - On highway its a quiet and easy if not heavy feeling tourer capable of 11.6lt/100km however we got 13lt/100km. But overall comfort was not noticeably better than the petrol Patrol (which uses 17lt/100km).
IN The Dirt - This car now has several electronic systems designed
to make it a better 4wd (according to ads), these include
Hill descent control Stabilty control, traction control and a few others.
Its huge ground clearance (same as Patrol) meant it did prety
well
puttering over around over rocks but we have a nice
test road known as Basin Olinda Rd here which is a narrow winding corrugated 2wd dirt road rising more than a 1000ft and a real
test of vehicles.
This road had just had an inch of rain, was mushy, as is probably exactly where you would expect a car like this to shine.
With over 200kw on tap and all traction systems going we headed off and the car felt good, hard into corners you could feel
this systems cutting in preventing excessive wheelspin and keeping
the car straight, despite the mud and slippery conditions that had
other cars in a crawl.
It handled corrugations very
well, braked beatifully. Its all
electric motor controlled steering was perhaps a little vague.
Up near the top of
Mount Dandenong, a dead end track intersects
with the main dirt road with a 300mm deep gutter seperating the two.
Trying to fool the traction control we drove across the gutter at 45 degrees and sure enough on our second try we got the front/Rear opposing wheels basically off-ground and sure enough it couldn't figure out what to do and we were stuck. You could feel the system locking wheels and trying to grab but no luck. A bit of reverse/forward with the auto transmission and a lot of right foot and eventually it grabbed and kicked us not very neatly over the obstackle.
Dissapointed we took it
home, wheeled out the Patrol and drove
exactly the same course to get and honest comparison.
The Patrol has about the same power, but is not quite as quick.
It wasn't quite as good in the stability department but was more
predictable. You could spin a wheel anytime and as the conditions
were bad we tried 4wd high range which kept sliding down significantly.
However the NO-ABS Patrol was hard to keep straight under full lock up braking. My conclusion here was that the Kluger was better if your not into driving.
Now back at the gutter that defeated the Kluger, the Patrol just
drove smoothly and consistently across. As it had open diffs this
simply came down to that most basic of things, wheel articulation.
Overall its not fair to compare the Kluger in hard 4wd stuff and I don't but its designed and touted for far more than highway cruising and in our opinion at $60,000+ its just isn't up to the job.
Robin Miller