Faults:

Heater control was not connected on delivery.

Water leak in driver's door flooded footwell. This required a new door trim to fix the problem.

I have just buckled one of the 17" alloys on a pothole.

The whole car rattles.

General Comments:

Good points:

The engine is smooth and powerful for the most part, although it's not going as well as it did when new.

It's a quiet car, except for the rattles.

Driving position and seat comfort are superb.

The xenon headlamps are great.

Bad points:

I hate the 17" Silverstone alloys. They give an abysmal ride quality, the tyres are expensive and the wheels are made of soft metal which buckles readily, as I've just discovered.

Everything rattles - the dashboard, the door trims, the tailgate, and the exhaust heatshield, which requires me to get underneath every month or so to bend it out.

The fuel economy is awful. I get about 38mpg in winter, rising to 43 in summer. I rarely do any urban driving, and generally don't exceed 75mph on motorways. My previous Laguna (old model 2.2dT) used to get 42mpg and it used an old-technology engine.

Faults:

Start / stop switch has been replaced twice as it gets stuck in and then the car randomly starts and stops on its own while driving.

Plastic cover over radio is jammed and not covered by warranty.

ABS failed at 22,000 miles and took dealer 2 full weeks to fix.

Recently (27,000miles on) the car cuts out every now and then for no reason.

General Comments:

Every plastic part in the car rattles when driving.

Fuel economy is very poor indeed. I am not sure how Renault work out the fuel economy to be 50mpg combined? I recently did a 250mile motorway journey driving between 60 and 80mph all the way and got 42.1mpg average. If it can't do 50mpg in a straight line how can they claim that combined? The best the car has seen is 47mpg and that's with the car empty and just me in it doing 55mph down hill.

The engine is underpowered compared to about every diesel on the market. I don't believe the car is the 120bhp that Renault claim. For example the Volkswagen SDi (67bhp economy diesel) pulls stronger then this car. True this car has a fast 0-60 time, but it only moved if you really rev it, if you want to drive like that then you don't buy a disel. Setting off from busy junctions is a very scary experience, you either chug out and nearly stall or you blip the throttle hard first and the car smokes its tyres, there doesn't seem to be much in between.

The Renault dealers are the worst part of owning the car. I have been to 2 different dealers and they are both exactly the same. They seem to have a "service with a frown" policy as well as a "the customer is always wrong" policy. They plug the car into a diagnostic computer and what the computer says is what goes. It doesn't matter if you tell them that the engine cut out 5 times on the way to the dealer. If the computer says all OK then they send you on your way without bothering to do anything.