When the salesperson asked us, when did we hear of the Fluence, we simply couldn’t answer that question. We answered “research”. I guess along the way, we saw that this car is a reasonable and strong contender. But we have brushed it aside for a while, cos we were scared of ‘conti’ service and special repair cost, till one day when it fell into our price range. We decided to test drive a 5 yo fluence. Xin read that one of the potential problems is power loss.

Review of the 2nd hand car : The car is good looking on the outside, but the interiors is ugly. Most of the time i will be staring at these ugly dials, stepping on the accelerator, and it doesnt feel good. I went around AYE twice. Once, i felt that there’s no power. Then i realise the guy has 3 layers of mat, preventing me to step on it. So I went again. Firstly there’s no kick down, but even after flooring it, the car moves off in a ‘linear’ speed increment fashion. It’s like driving my dad’s Vios! 1.5l toyota engine. For a lack of a better word, the old fluence is sluggish.

So, we went ahead to test drive the new fluence. It’s 1.5 turbocharged diesel. It can do 22km per litre of dirty fossil. Well, not so dirty anymore according to the salepersons. It rurns me off that the fluence is running on Euro 5 instead of the Euro 6, like rest of the ENTIRE fleet. No auto start/stop at traffic lights. It has the kickdown though. But i didn’t get a chance to use it as i didnt have enough road to fly.

A lot of things are boring. The key fob is a black piece of plastic with buttons on it. It’s like a work-in-progress school project. The salesperson talked some bull about what if the thing runs flat, and he detached one part of it, and it’s a physical key. He bragged about how they ( not sure if it’s nissan or renault ) thought about these things. I didn’t tell him about how Toyota’s fob is so good that it landed in a swimming pool, and it still works. And you can’t simply cracked it open and change the calculator size battery. Borneo sent my cousin’s key fog back to Japan. In your world, when you talk, you think it’s the best thing in the world, but actually, there’s just so much things happening that should make you ashamed of your product. Anyway small problem.

The car seems to have more headroom than the other cars. But we gotta go back and test the rest again. So, 1.5 turbodiesel – unresponsive, slightly noisy, and not eager. Compared to the Qashqai which is only a 1.2 turbo petrol, the fluence might as well be called a no-turbo. It’s non-existent. The qashqai, or jetta, both are eager, “Step on it”, the cars would say. And you feel the joy immediately when you do that. It’s just enthusiastic.

The salesperson also mentioned the DCT, dual clutch transmission. Talked about how it’s used in motorsports, etc. Said CVT is not reliable, and this is better. Well, all the honda range has pedal shifts, and it’s used in F1 too, but it’s nothing practical. Therefore, no honda for me. Pedal shifts are not as practical as the cruise control nor wing mirrors auto retract function, or the walk away auto lock function. anyway the DCT is supposed to be a great thing, but honestly, it doesnt do anything for me. I know that it’s for high fuel efficiency etc. Perhaps i need to say that it doesnt really impact me in a joyful way, yes it saves me money, but needing to travel from A to B is most of the time already a chore, then why dont make it more responsive, and happier.

This angers me. Brings out all the rage in me. They tell me it’s very nicely designed. Look at this shit and tell me they have thought it through. Tell me, what is this for?
R is for resume, and O is for OFF. WOW ! AND, the cruise control & speed limiter is in the middle, between the passenger and driver, next to the handbrake. How come the button to activate cruise control & speed limiter is NOT together with the Increase/decrease speed button ???

Look at this dashboard. It looks like Proton trying to go digital.

did i mention the engine start/stop button is on the LEFT of the middle console?

They actually have a top secret “Strictly internal use only” sheet of paper comparing their service pricing and borneo’s. It’s up to 60k, and apparently, it’s CHEAPER! Wow! Really? they said that Fluence shares 50% of parts with the other cars in the fleet. This is just somehow difficult to be swallowed, CONSIDERING, when we met the 5yo fluence car owner, he showed us his record, and he changed something, and it was SGD 3k! 5 yo and 3k worth change of parts. This is not good.

The salesperson is very very courteous, nice, says the appropriate things, and knowledgeable in his product. This is the saving grace of Renault.

Anyway, yes, NOW, the contenders are Mazda 3 & Renault Kadjar.
Need to test drive the Kadjar and feel the engine.