Renault Beat Up the Austral for Nearly 2 Million Miles During Prototype Testing

You might not know the Austral (which is not sold in the U.S.), but you surely heard about its cousins sold under Nissan's badge, the Qashqai, the Rogue, and the X-Trail (in the U.S.). All of them are built on the same CMF-CD platform, and all tests made on one of them are reflected in the quality of its other stablemates. Still, the other vehicles were not tested as intensively as the Austral. The French product went through some thorough tests before it was introduced on the market in 2022.

Behind all these tests is a man named Thierry Charvet, Chief Industry & Quality Officer for the Renault Group. He envisioned the Confirmation Runs, on which vehicles are extensively tested on various road conditions, highways, mountain roads, cities, and test tracks. But make no mistakes. These are additional ones after the vehicle was already green-lighted for production and before all commercial launches.

The Confirmation Run project started at the Aubevoye Technical Center near Paris. They have an excellent facility there that I had the chance to visit some years ago. Thanks to its banked track, Renault's test pilots can perform high-speed runs and all sorts of wading, slaloms, comfort, and sound tests. Afterward, a small fleet of pre-production vehicles from the model they wanted to try was handed over to other expert pilots to drive under various conditions. The first vehicle that went through this project was the 2020 Megane E-Tech electric.

The automaker used 160 vehicles from the pre-production series for the Austral and gave them to 100 Renault employees for testing. One of them, the Spaniard Alvaro Rodriguez Sastre, drove the Austral between 1,000 and 1,500 kilometers (621 to 932 miles) per week to see how the car was behaving. Using an app for his smartphone, he had to fill out a report for various parts of the vehicle.

For instance, some stone-covered roads induce high-frequency vibrations in vehicles. These shakings are usually dampened by shock absorbers and bushings. Still, some of them are founding their way onto the car's interior, and thus you can hear unpleasant squeaks and noises coming from the dashboard. With the right tune of the suspension and maybe other improvements on mounting points, the car can perform better.

Nevertheless, other components need to be tested in the real world, such as the infotainment display, the gear changes, the materials' quality, and so on. All of them were tested on the Austral during its 2.8-million kilometers (1.72-million mile) Confirmation Run. It showed the carmaker how the vehicle would behave in such difficult situations. But not all of them are following the same route. Some were driven between Spain and France. Others were tested in Germany or Romania, with the latter being known for its Transfagarasan highway. And yes, the Austral was tested there for elevation changes and suspension settings.

After all the results are gathered in a database, the engineers have to figure out how to solve the problems on the production lines. Sometimes it's just a minor software adjustment. Other times, a different part might need to be developed. Of course, this doesn't mean that the final product is going to be flawless and will run over one-million miles (1.6 million kilometers), but still, there are fewer chances of seeing these vehicles falling apart. Renault-Nissan doesn't have the "sell now, fix later" policy like other brands. Moreover, they want to avoid seeing their cars recalled over and over again.

So, what's the result? After the Austral, the French automaker introduced the sixth generation of the Renault Espace. This vehicle was no longer an MPV as its previous five generations, but a seven-seat SUV. Thus, many components were already tested during the Confirmation Run project. In addition, you might expect to see some improvements on the 2024 model-year Nissan vehicles that are built on top of the same platform.

As for the Austral, this is a very important bet for the French automaker. It was launched in 2022 and is a compact SUV. Its predecessor was the Kadjar, which sold almost 700,000 units during its seven years lifespan. But it had flaws and was built on the same platform as the 2022 Austral, yet with different engines.

This compact SUV is good for transporting up to five people inside its cabin. It is sold in the UK with a starting price of 35,000 GBP (43,536 USD) for the base model, with an expected price of 45,000 GBP (56,000 USD) for the range-topper, but you won't find it on the U.S. shores. As long as the Alliance has Nissan, Infiniti, and Mitsubishi on the North American continent, it doesn't have to sell its vehicles there. Furthermore, there are still many people who remember the awful Renault Alliance lineup.

But the good news is that thanks to this program, other models built on the same platform will benefit. So, if you're looking for a Rogue or an X-Trail, you might have the chance to get a better version of it for the 2024 model year. It doesn't really matter that the Austral is built in Spain and the Japanese-branded vehicles are made in Tennessee. They are sharing this kind of information regarding upgrades. And if you like it, you might thank Mr. Alvarez, a six-time national racing champion in Spain, for his input, especially on suspension, brakes, and performance.