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They went through a phase in the noughties especially of producing too complicated by half cars, but then they weren't alone in having a bad spell, and German maker's own results of thinking themselves too clever by half to make a mistake are still materialising, just a decade or so later, but ignored my many motoring journalists (not here noted) and seemingly by the buying public who can't invest in DSG's and timing chains of cheese fast enough...insert face palm here.
Half of Renaults problems was that stupid credit card key, a fragile and temperamental thing that cos a lot to fix when the system went on the blink, and early adoption of pointless toys like tyre pressure monitoring...that alone kept half the renters out of action at the time i was involved in rentals, plus being a pioneer of the biggest folly of the last 20 years, the electric parking brake from hell....note here how Toyota/Subaru/Honda were late adopters of such things, and note how their reputations as used cars differ, the big difference is Japanese electrics are better than the others..
Laguna 1 was a fine car, hampered due to lack of electronics, they badly needed ABS which wasn't fitted to many and were prone to locking the front wheels on the slightest damp patch, so loads of them had front end crash damage, with Lag 2 they went completely overboard with the toys, presumably untested on Britains annual salt bath roads.
If you ran older Renaults, and i had a Diesel 21 Savannah estate which never gave any issues, they were superb cars, soft sprung and comfy seats but could hold the road and keep up on the twisties with any concrete sprung pretend hot hatch, and i think if you bought from about 2009 onwards, you will get a car every bit as reliable as most from the mainstream makers, cheap too because the previous generation models were the troublesome ones which ruined their reputation.
I'd quite happily buy a Laguna 3 (especially if it wasn't such an ugly brute, though estate looks prettier), cheap as chips because Lag 2 reputation infects.
People say they don't stand the test of time, but then if you risked keeping half the German cars made at the same point in time as long you'd have some seriously eye watering bills to keep them going, especially when that white elephant DSG spits its dummy out, or one of the faulted engines from the same mob rushed out decided to rattle its balance shaft to pieces or the buried inaccessible EGR fails or whatever else their list of fragile motors usually fails on.
The more upmarket German marque made some right ropey stuff in the noughties too, that rotted before your very eyes, and some of their later designs have problems the dealers seem to ignore, but they were soon forgiven by the (who? motoring press or buyers?), Renault not forgiven, not high enough image presumabl or is it simply a case of German = good quality, French = not?.
Alfas are forgiven for being a pita, because apparently they look the part and image sells no matter how short it's life might be, well they don't look the part to me but then i think Landcruisers and Hino trucks are good looking as well as reliable durable vehicles :-)
Much of the problem of modern cars isn't the cars themselves its how they are driven, and how they are simultaneously abused and neglected by so many owners who can't even be bothered to check the oil level now and again, let alone think about helping clean off salt ingress into the over-complicated underbellies of modern cars... simpler cars last and the more complicated generally don't unless they are valuable enough to be kept well maintained by the well heeled.
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