Renault Kadjar boot space, practicality and safety

• Spacious passenger compartment
• Large, well-shaped boot
• Plenty of storage for odds and ends

As you’d expect for a car of this size, Renault Kadjar practicality is impressive. There’s more than ample room for four fully grown adults to sit in comfort, while three younger children in the back should pose few problems either.

You get a pair of cupholders in the front and the same in the rear – situated in a folding arm rest between the two outer seats. There’s a total of 30 litres of storage in cubbies dotted around the cabin. Front and rear passengers both benefit from a 12-volt socket too.

The boot measures 472 litres, extending to a maximum of 1,478 litres when the rear seats are folded down flat. That’s more than its Qashqai stablemate, but less than the likes of the Peugeot 3008, SEAT Ateca and Kia Sportage. However, there’s useful underfloor storage and an adjustable boot floor, while it’s easy to expand the load space by folding the rear seats down. This is possible via a simple lever located in the boot.

And the luggage space itself is very versatile. It allows three configurations thanks to high and low floor positions, but it’s split into two boards that can be positioned vertically across the width of the load bay, meaning you’re able to secure smaller items you don’t want flying around when you’re driving.

The Kadjar is slightly longer than Qashqai on which it’s based, but it’s no more difficult to manoeuvre and park. There are parking sensors and/or cameras available on several models to assist with this, while there’s plenty of glass to aid the view out. What you will notice is the strange sound the sensors make, but you’ll get used to it in time.

• Five-star rating from Euro NCAP
• Raft of active safety kit available
• Surprising lack of adaptive cruise control

Renault Kadjar safety has been assessed by the experts at Euro NCAP’s crash-testing facility as a five-star car; no surprise given the French marque’s record over the past two decades.

At the core of the car you’ve got a strong, rigid body that also doesn’t weigh a huge amount. Standard safety features include ABS, stability and traction control systems, cruise control, a speed limiter, hill-start assist (to prevent rolling backwards on hills), six airbags and a pair of Isofix child seat mounting points on the two outer-most rear seats. There’s also a tyre-pressure monitoring system and a tyre inflation kit, should you get a flat tyre.

Moving up the range, you also get a suite of safety kit including lane-departure warning, traffic sign recognition and automatic high beam adjustment. The highest trims also get Automatic Park Assist, which will guide the car into and out of parallel, perpendicular or angled parking spaces

Autonomous Emergency Braking (AEB) only features as standard on top-spec GT Line, however.

Notable by its absence is adaptive cruise control, which isn’t even an option.