The old one was a fabulous family car, but its upkeep costs as it aged were completely unacceptable. I would be a lot more interested in how the new one is built and its maintenance and repair costs.
My old 54 Grand Scenic cost £800 for a 72,000 mile service, a clutch replacement cost a grand (more at a Renault dealer), a power steering fault a grand, replacing a heater blower resistor over £500 due to the labour involved etc etc. These costs render the car irrelevant as a family car in my opinion. Even apparently simple jobs with cheap parts that you might expect to cost a hundred or so quid ran into many hundreds due to poor mechanical design requiring high labour costs. What professional mechanics say about the cars also cannot be printed here.
I know these are not points HJ can test, but I would take it as read that the car would be smooth, comfortable, safe, spacious, practical, well equipped and good to live with - the old one was. I am more interested to see if Renault have learned their lessons re component quality and maintenance costs which, for a family with two young kids, who don't have thousands of pounds to throw at their car in a year to keep it on the road, were wholly unacceptable on the last generation product. I guess time will tell.
Cheers
DP
Edited by DP on 18/04/2009 at 09:29
|
|
Thanks DP for the horror story. As someone who usually keeps a car a long time that's not what I wanted to hear.
|
Merlin - there is a lot of evidence the newer Renaults are better, and if I were buying new and had the warranty there, it wouldn't bother me at all, but the thought of keeping ours to 100+k was not a pleasant one.
On the whole, it was a reliable car until the last couple of months. We bought it at 34k and just over 2 yrs old, and sold it last month at 64k. It took us on an epic 2500 mile road trip to Italy and back in the Summer in total comfort, with utter reliability, and at 42 mpg average. I have sung the praises of the amazing Renault dCi engine on these pages on many occasion. It wipes the floor with anything coming out of Germany for sheer refinement and "petrol-ness". Sounds and feels like a piece of precision engineering rather than a rumbly piece of pig iron. Gutsy, smooth, fuel efficient and generally brilliant. The car itself was designed by a genius too, being just about perfect on the practicality front, and with a lovely light, airy modern feel inside. The ride makes the Golf that replaced this car feel like it has no suspension at all. It was a lovely, lovely car in many ways.
It needed a window regulator, which Renault UK kindly paid for despite being a few months out of warranty. A wastegate pipe split sending it into limp mode, but this was diagnosed and fixed permanently, first time, for £90 by our (excellent) Renault dealer. That was about it. But in the last few months, the power steering started intermittently cutting out and I was gobsmacked to find that no parts are available separately and that an entire replacement steering column is needed which amounts to four figures with fitting. There was an intermittent fault with the heater blower too which requires the dash to be removed - a four hour job which is a total swine according to the mechanic who was going to be tasked with it.
The MOT also picked up a weeping rear shock absorber (not very impressive at 60,000 miles IMHO) - another few hundred quid, and a few other niggles which were coming up like the exhaust heat shield falling to bits and rattling, the signs of uneven rear tyre wear, and the bits of the interior that were starting to fall to bits. The decision maker was when the clutch release bearing / concentric slave cylinder grenaded itself without warning (the bang was so loud, it woke up my four year old who was snoozing in the back). This cost us £50 short of a grand to fix. That was without the upcoming cambelt service at 72k which was £800 worth! It was decided that we simply didn't need the hassle, and the car had to go.
We both really miss it in many ways, but not the anxiety that was starting to creep in with every new noise or thing starting to go wrong. I think when a car gets to that stage, you can only do one thing.
I firmly believe if Renault can get their quality control and reliability licked, they will be among the very best "affordable" cars that money can buy. Really, I do. As a piece of design, there was little not to like about our Scenic, and a heck of a lot to love. There's a certain flair to them which German cars simply can't get near, and the practicality side is clearly designed by people with kids, and who have the same priorities as their target customers. Renault understand their target market superbly.
I genuinely hope the new stuff is better. I want them to succeed.
Cheers
DP
|
|
|
|
