• Summary
• What's Good
• What's Bad
• On the Road
• In The Cabin
• Prices and Specs
• Owners' Reviews

Any car maker competing in the cut-throat D-segment (that’s Mondeo-sized family cars) faces a dauntingly sheer rock-face at the moment. Against a backdrop of collapsing sales, every brand is rushing to claim the ‘premium’ credentials that are necessary to keep its model in the game. 

Renault’s mountain is bigger and steeper than most. It has seen Laguna sales nose-dive in recent years, while its performance in owner satisfaction surveys has been little short of disastrous. 

So here’s the huge task that Renault has set itself: to become, by 2009, in the top three brands for product and service quality. That means beating the Germans and most of the Japanese – quite some feat. According to Renault, the new third-generation Laguna is the car that begins the turnaround – and it’s spent one billion euros to ensure that it does. 

Having driven the new Sports Tourer estate – there’s also a hatchback version – does the new Laguna III have that quality aura? No question, this is way above anything that Renault has previously delivered. The feel of the materials in the cabin, for instance, is now comparable with VW and Audi. 

The cabin looks best in Initiale trim, with its light wood detailing and airy colours. It’s an elegant design, with a swooping dashboard and well-positioned controls (although some of the minor switchgear is a bit fiddly to use).

The Laguna III Sports Tourer is bigger in all respects than its predecessor: longer, wider and taller. Despite that, it’s 15-65kg lighter (depending on model). The growth certainly helps interior space: there’s plenty of legroom in the rear, with decent headroom for tall people, too. 

It also boosts luggage volume to 501 litres with all seats raised (up 26 litres) and 1593 with the seats folded (up 78 litres). There’s a clever one-touch facility that folds the rear seats without you having to grapple with them. The seat backs fold completely flat, although the seat bases don’t tumble. You’re left with a load floor that’s just over 2 metres long and, although the boot is a little narrow and the sloping tailgate intrudes on space, it’s well shaped for large objects. Another clever feature is a parcel shelf that not only slides back with a simple finger touch, it can also be stowed in a special area under the boot floor. We like the separately opening upper tailgate but it’s only standard on the Initiale – for other models, you’ll need to pay £150 extra. 

The Sports Tourer also looks much better than the hatchback, which helps explain why it will take up to 50 per cent of all Laguna sales. Significantly, the typical profile for the estate buyer is far younger: while the average age of the Laguna hatchback owner is mid-50s, the Tourer’s is more like 40. 

That quality issue is also being addressed by a 100,000-mile warranty, compared to the industry norm of 60,000 miles (but Renault stays at three years, not five or seven as pioneered by the Korean brands).