Renault Laguna Coupe GT | Shed of the Week
Remember when people said the two-door Renault Laguna sort of looked a bit like an Aston Martin? Shed does...
Shed is depressingly familiar with the concept of mutton dressed as lamb. When Mrs Shed goes out on the town with her tattooed girfriends she will generally don one of her glittery miniskirts. Although a Mrs Shed miniskirt has more material in it than a tall ship’s spinnaker, it’s still tight when it’s on her. The high-tension result looks like a cross between a leaky Saturn 5 solid fuel booster in the last few seconds before blastoff and the waste bin of a Belgian boudin blanc factory (which are big white sausages for those who haven’t been to Liege, a town in Belgium for those who haven’t been to Belgium).
You may think that this week’s shed, a last-gen Laguna Coupe with a diesel engine, falls into this undesirable category, but don’t judge too hastily. There’s more to this one than meets the eye.
What meets Shed’s eyes is rather handsome. From the front three-quarter it comes across as a mélange (or blend, for those who haven’t been to France) between a Peugeot Coupe, a Fiat Coupe and, in the grillage, some sort of Aston Martin. Which is perhaps not that surprising because the Renault guy who designed the Laguna Coupe was an Aston owner. Moving unsteadily around to the rear three-quarter, Shed – who admittedly has been hitting the cider recently – is getting a whiff of Mercedes CLA. What does the raised centre section of the bootlid remind you of? For Shed, it’s Alpine A110 all day long.
There was one of these gen-three Laguna Coupes in SOTW at the end of 2022, a silvery-blue one with cloth seats and a 150hp 2.0 diesel which made it good for 130mph and a 0-60mph time in the low nines. This week’s Coupe is a GT, which means it gets the 180hp diesel. That trims the 0-60 time down to the low eights and lifts the top speed to nearly 140mph. It was a pretty efficient unit by the looks of it, with numbers like 150g/km and 49mpg being bandied around that theoretically gave you over 700 miles from a tankful, but the real-world mpg was nearer to 40 than 50. Still good though. The tax is doable too at £290pa, and not much goes wrong with the engines on these Nissan/Renault cooperative efforts.
Warming to it yet? Good, step inside then and admire the pleated leather seats that the GT badge added (along with sat nav) to an already more than decent spec sheet which included cruise control, heated mirrors, parking sensors and the like. The seats were meant to be heated too but it was hard to tell sometimes. Plus of course there was the steering wheel which, unlike Mrs Shed, had a fashionably flat bottom.
If you’re thinking that this could be this year’s Le Mans transport for you and three of your mates, Shed wouldn’t disagree with you. The only advice he’d give would be to choose your mates carefully. At least two of them will need to be on the stumpy side because there won’t be much legroom in the back if you and the other goon upfront insist on ratcheting your seats right back. Also, both you and your mates would have to travel light. Although the boot capacity is a perfectly reasonable 423 litres, this Coupe is a two-door rather than a three-door hatch so the aperture for load insertion is small, which of course is why Shed prefers his jaunts with the postmistress as she doesn’t feel the need for lots of baggage.
When your mates in the back start moaning about losing the feeling in their legs, simply give them an impromptu lecture on the gen-one Laguna’s glorious record in touring car racing. Try not to talk about the Laguna 2 though because that did have a poor reputation for reliability and quality. Renault paid attention to that and the 3 was noticeably improved in both areas.
The MOT history on this 119,000-miler is angst-free. The only advisories on last July’s test were for a couple of rusting brake lines that had had some grease dobbed onto them sometime between 2021 and 2022. The owner did some front suspension refresh work at that time too, and again in ’23, so you shouldn’t have to. Shed remembers that other SOTW Coupe having rusty rear springs but there’s no indication of that here. It doesn’t matter much anyway because a replacement was only £16 a couple of years ago. The next owner might want to think about different options in that department because the back end was on the firm side, again unlike Mrs Shed’s.
Last thing I am is negative.
I thought I was a glass half empty kind of guy, but your glass doesn't seem to contain any drops at all
FWIW I think these have aged pretty well. The VED is a bit steep for a diesel, but most are these days. Makes a change from the normal Volvo, Rover, Saab type entries.....
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