Renault Master Quickshift 6 Van Range Car Review

Facts At A Glance VAN: Renault Master Quickshift6 van Range ENGINES: 100bhp 2.5dCi, 115bhp 2.5dCi, 136bhp 3.0dCi LOAD VOLUMES: 8.0-13.9 cubic metres MGVW: 2.8, 3.3 or 3.5 tonnes BODY OPTIONS: panel van, chassis cab, chassis double-cab, platform cab, minibus

WORKING THE RIGHT SHIFT?

Our Rating: 7.4 / 10

Manual Or Automatic? It’s A Dilema That’s Increasingly Coming To The Fore In The Car Market But Now Models Like Renault’s Master Quickshift6 Are Presenting Van Buyers With The Same Conundrum. Steve Walker Reports…

You could be forgiven for wondering why automatic gearboxes have never appealed more strongly to van buyers. The sluggish, performance-sapping nature of older auto systems was always going to deter the keen car driver but in a van your priorities are different. Most light commercial vehicles don’t readily lend themselves to spirited driving and the labour-saving benefits of a good auto-‘box would really be felt during a long day behind the wheel. Advances in technology mean that things are better still today. Semi-automatic gearboxes like Renault’s Quickshift6 provide greater potential for driver input and reduce the fuel consumption penalties traditionally associated with automatics. Could systems like this be about to spark a self-shifting revolution in van land?

Revolution might be too strong a word. Renault set modest targets for their Quickshift6 transmission system, expecting it to be specified in 5% of the Master vans sold and the same proportion of Trafic models. It’s not going to set the sales charts on fire but with other van manufacturers having also brought semi-automatic gearboxes to market, there’s definitely an upward trend where this technology is concerned.

The Quickshift6 is a 6-speed clutchless gearbox so you’ve only got the two pedals to busy your feet with and the Master’s usual dash-mounted manual shifter is replaced with a dinky joystick. When driving, it’s either in fully automatic mode where it operates like a standard automatic gearbox or it’s in semi-automatic mode where the driver uses the joystick to flick up and down the ratios as he or she deems appropriate.

The automatic mode is fairly self-explanatory: you potter along with the computer system taking account of speed, acceleration, braking, road gradient and the vehicle’s load to identify and engage the optimum gear. The semi-auto setting is a little more complicated. Once selected (by sliding the joystick to the left), it allows the driver to push the lever forward to change up and pull it backwards to change down. In both modes, reverse is engaged manually buy sliding the lever right into neutral then down.

Semi-auto shifting isn’t as autonomous as this suggests however. The Quickshift6 transmission computer doesn’t retreat into itself to complete that game of solitaire or search the web for cute pictures of babies. It remains on its toes, ready to intervene should the driver do anything ill advised. There are all sorts of settings within the system to prevent you coming to grief. An up change will be cancelled if the accelerator is quickly released and Quickshift6 won’t let you shift down if doing so at your current speed would result in the van’s key components turning themselves inside out. Likewise, if you’re going too slowly for the gear it will make a downshift on its own and first gear is automatically selected at speeds below 7kph.

There’s more too: the Quickshift6 gearbox can be set in ‘load mode’ which adapts the shifting characteristics for a heavily laden van. This setting reduces clutch slip and changes the gear-change thresholds to account for the extra weight. Also useful is ‘snow mode’, a setting which limits wheelspin when pulling away in icy conditions.

It all sounds like clever stuff but how does the Quickshift6 system perform in real world conditions? From the start, it’s hard not to embrace the idea of automatic gearboxes in vans. These are large cumbersome vehicles and there’s no real pleasure to be derived from the extra control that a manual ‘box gives you. In urban areas where jams, traffic lights and junctions have a manual van driver