Mid-sized family sedan market, consider yourself revived! After the new VW Passat, Skoda Superb and Ford Mondeo, comes the Renault Talisman. It's not cheap or very fast, but it's extremely French.
Up next, we're going to look at an acceleration test with the TCe 200 model that was shot at an international event. The car in question is as brown as dirt and comes with roughly the same engine as the current Clio RS hot hatch.
The Clio is very fast, but the Talisman is two segments larger, so it's not going to be as sprightly as a young weasel. For the record, this is the fastest and most powerful version of the Talisman sedan. The nearest engine is a twin-turbo diesel that's about two seconds slower to 100 km/h.
Renault's claim that the Talisman TCe 200 reaches 100 km/h in 7.6 seconds is clearly a legitimate one. However, there are several drive modes available, so it's not going to feel this fast all the time.
Another thing we find interesting is that the EDC gearbox seems to shift into fourth gear right around the time when 100 km/h is reached. The driver isn't doing anything wrong because it's an automatic, plus we can't be sure about what we're saying because Renault never shows the gear you're in on the dash.
We were originally tempted to write something along the lines, "Of course, we don't need to tell you that the Talisman is a little slower than its competitors since nearly all of them use 2.0-liter turbo engines."
But if we did that, we'd have to swallow our hats right about now. While it's true that the Skoda Superb comes with a 2.0 TSI rated at 220 PS, that model is more expensive. If we look at the Superb with the 1.8 TSI engine and the DSG7 gearbox, we will find it takes 8.1 seconds to reach 100 km/h. Will the Ford Mondeo do better? Not really, as the 2.0 EcoBoost 203 PS model needs 8.7 seconds to reach the benchmark speed, mainly due to the conventional automatic gearbox.
The Passat has two big lumps that can humiliate the Talisman sedan, partially thanks to the AWD availability. Unfortunately, both the 2.0 TSI (220 PS) and the 2.0 TDI (240 PS) are expensive. What's more, neither is available in France. So, you see, Renault has done its homework!
Mihnea's favorite cars have already been built, the so-called modern classics from the '80s and '90s. He also loves local car culture from all over the world, so don't be surprised to see him getting excited about weird Japanese imports, low-rider VWs out of Germany, replicas from Russia or LS swaps down in Florida. Full profile
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