Faults:

Injectors, washer.

General Comments:

A serious contender for other brands who are more expensive to buy. A good comfortable cruiser, riding on the motorway in style.

This Laguna is one of the 3 I had in the last 4 years. I love the way it looks, even after 15 years since launched.

This one I have now is a 1.9 turbo diesel, 6 speed manual. The other Lagunas I had were 1.6 and 1.8 engines. The 1.6 was good for town use, but needed more power on open road. I would suggest the 1.8 for more power and better fuel consumption at higher speeds.

The diesel I own now gets 43 MPG even driven by my heavy foot, and pulls through the gears with ease.

Do I recommend this car? Of course!

Would I buy another Laguna again? Of course!

Faults:

Just minor things like broken accessories button in the card reader. 15 minutes and I fixed it with a little help of manual found at Renault Laguna Club Poland. Now the engine starts after a little touch of the start button. Before, I had to hold the start button until the engine starts.

Hands free system needs to be repaired. I'm just too lazy to send my Renault Card to the mechanic; costs about $25 to fix it.

General Comments:

I'm impressed with the performance of little 1.8 engine with 122HP. Thanks to 16 valves and variable valve timing, the engine is very responsive above 3400RPM, and quite economic at low RPM. Great reliable engine for this car.

Interior looks great, and is very quiet and comfortable. I love the comfortable seats, advanced air condition system with humidity and air pollution sensors, automatic windshield wipers, radio volume automatically increasing with speed, sun shades built in the rear windows, tire pressure sensors, etc. This car is equipped with such a great things! Crappy Volkswagen is a piece of junk in comparison with that comfort!

Exterior looks sexy, and even after 10 years after it was designed, it looks fresh and stylish. It's incredible that even after 10 years, some equipment features as a card instead of a key, tire pressure sensors, dual A/C, GPS, built in radio antenna, ESP, cruise control and comfortable seats are not common in nowadays cars.

I'm also so happy about the safety level of that car. 6 airbags, 5 star safety rating, great brakes, ESP... all that stuff is priceless.

Faults:

Where do I start?

Rear and front suspension bushes.

Cat fixing plate sheared off, causing cat to shear off and break at turbo exit point. Various attempts at welding seem to have worked, else £900 for a new cat!!!

Rear and front wheel bearings.

Broken water pump.

And for the big one. This car has had 2 new gear boxes. The first just after I took ownership, and the second when the driveshaft damaged the differential. It turns out that after 100k of mileage and 7 years, the driveshaft was just 20mm too short and caused all sorts of problems when turning left, something I had to do for at least 50% of my time on the road!

Engine mounts, gearbox mounts were all replaced, suspension was checked, all was where it should've been, drive shaft was too short, MASSIVE design flaw by Renault I think. Total cost of this repair was £2,000.

New gearbox linkage - Renault only sell it complete, not just the cables... Another way of ripping people off.

There are other things I have just forgotten...

General Comments:

Lovely car to look at, very nice inside, and simplistic, which is good. Not many rattles etc... Car started to wear with age inside, all inside parts still worked fine though.

Car is quick for its age, 120bhp diesel, with good amounts of torque. Large boot area and very practical. I loved this car, and it broke my heart with its poor reliability. Not sure how Renault could make such a bad car; wasn't aware it was possible to be that bad!

Unfortunately I shall never buy another Renault based on this experience. My previous Laguna (W plate - Phase I) was amazing and never missed a beat, but this had changed for the Phase II.

Off to Toyota now, hopefully I'll have money to spend on my girlfriend from now on...