Renault. Did their reliability improve?

[JonnyO]

I remember when the current generation Laguna was released, Renault made a big deal out the fact that they were making a big improvement to the reliability of their cars.
I'm interested in buying a current generation Scenic (3 or so years old). We had an older one before and my wife loved it, but it was a bit unreliable and expensive to fix. Basically I'm wondering, did Renault have a real commitment to improve the reliability of their cars and is the newer Scenic any good in that regard?

[cptsideways]

JonnyO said:

I remember when the current generation Laguna was released, Renault made a big deal out the fact that they were making a big improvement to the reliability of their cars.
I'm interested in buying a current generation Scenic (3 or so years old). We had an older one before and my wife loved it, but it was a bit unreliable and expensive to fix. Basically I'm wondering, did Renault have a real commitment to improve the reliability of their cars and is the newer Scenic any good in that regard?

Their quality improved massively when they were no longer known as the cheese eating surrender monkeys

[dav123a]

Had a look at what car reliability survey for 2010 puts Renault in 30 out of 32. The warrenty direct site has Scenic as better than average.

[wheedler]

Can you tell me which car is cheap to fix? French cars are not bad if you buy cheap enough

[JonnyO]

No, but I can tell you that replacing the rear discs and pads on a mk2 Scenic was crazy money at around £500 at a garage and not much less in just parts top do it yourself. Thats just one example of the comparatively high running costs of that car. Not to mention the expensive dephaser pulley replacement on the 1.6 petrol, regular turbo failures on the diesels and almost certain to happen failure of the automatic handbrake that also costs silly money because the system cannot be replaced as individual components but only as a very expensive motor assembly.

[JonnyO]

oh, and I don't have any problems with French cars per-se (apart from Peugeots of which I shall never have another). Its just that Renaults from a few years ago had some very peculiar design decisions that almost seemed intentional to have to send you to the dealer network for a very expensive fix. Combine that with shortcuts in the design and engineering leading to premature and frequent failures and its something I'd rather avoid.
However, the missus did love her scenic and if we could get one that didn't costs a fortune to keep on the road I'd have to say they would suit our needs as a family really well.

[MajorProblem]

We've put 130k miles on our 1.5dci modus the only casualty so far being an egr valve at 35k.

[littlebasher]

My wife's old 2005 Scenic that we replaced last week - not a single fault all the time we had it
My 2011 Laguna, no faults from new and actually a very well built car
Daughters 2008 Scenic 1.5 dci, no faults either.

Replaced the Mrs Scenic with the latest shape one, again massive improvement in build quality. Only time will tell about it's reliability!

[Bezza1969]

The latest reliability surveys still have a lot of the rubbish era Renaults in them, ie. any megane or laguna built before 2007. I understand that the Mk2 Laguna isnt too bad on reliability, ditto the latest Megane. Its hard to shake off a bad rep however, as Alfa/Fiat have found..

[plfrench]

Bezza1969 said:

The latest reliability surveys still have a lot of the rubbish era Renaults in them, ie. any megane or laguna built before 2007. I understand that the Mk2 Laguna isnt too bad on reliability, ditto the latest Megane. Its hard to shake off a bad rep however, as Alfa/Fiat have found..

Eh?! The Mk2 Laguna was horrendously bad for reliability. Quite right that they should find it hard to shake the reputation - it is unforgiveable that they thought they could get away with dumping that rubbish on customers.