I went over to Renault showroom recently and was smitten by the MPV Kangoo. Something about the car gets me excited over it and I can’t pin point what it is. My wife seams to think it is because of the mykangooclub.com but I disagree. The car is not exactly slick looking, and frankly, it is rather ugly, but somehow with the right color (Tango Yellow/Tango Orange), the car does look unique.

Kangoo is Renault’s answer to the Mini-MPV market segment and it has been in the market since 1999. There is a commercial model, that comes without back windows and selling at RM4xK and there is a passenger model, that comes with back windows and selling at RM68K without insurance. This MPV only comes with 1.4l in Malaysia. There is a Manual and Automatic model and the difference in price is almost RM5K.

The car comes with some nifty features, ABS, Proactive Automatic transmission with 9 shift patterns that adapts to the driving style, engine immobilizer, automatic lock when the car moves and adjustable headlight height.

From some of the forums, the car has problems with the automatic transmission where it needs some reset at times, built quality problems like many Malaysian made proton (Kangoo is now a CKD by Tan Chong Motors) and a lousy sound system and the engine immobilizer additional keys need to order from France.

With all this, I am still excited to have a test drive this weekend. Who knows, I may make a rash decision this weekend….