1985 Renault 25 V6 Injection review from Australia and New Zealand

Endless electrical faults - mostly minor but frustrating and sometimes expensive due mainly to the complexity of tracing the faults.

Replaced all of the rubber hoses at 98000 miles. There is a rubber hose right in the valley under the fuel injection which joins a metal cooling pipe to the water pump on the V6 engine, and the metal pipe runs right down the valley to be joined at the back of the motor to the rest of the cooling system. The rubber joiner perished and had to be replaced. The whole fuel injection system had to come off to get to it. The cost was $900NZD to fix.

The voice synthesiser kept saying," Warning, Electrical System Faulty, Stop engine immediately." for no apparent reason. When you stopped the engine, it kepts saying,"Check belt immediately, if good, drive to nearest garage." At times, I felt like driving it to the garbage disposal rather than the garage. The Auto Electrician checked it out but found no apparent fault $500 NZD later.

The starter motor spat the dummy after 110,000 miles.

In the end, the Automatic Transmission spat the dummy at 150,000 miles, costing nearly $5,000 NZD to repair. I ended up bailing out of the car once that happened. The mechanic swapped the Renault for a rusty Volvo 360 GLE with a recond motor and good gearbox.

Rust began to appear around the sunroof.

This car would be by far the most comfortable car that I have ever owned. I endorse other peoples comments about it being a poor mans Bentley. However, it was extremely expensive to maintain, and plagued with frustrating little electrical problems. The engine was beautiful, smooth and extremely reliable. However, the transmission (an electronically controlled 3 Stage Automatic) was an absolute dog.

An extremely well finished car, with beautiful big soft leather electric seats. The seat electrics gave no problems. No rust problems, apart from a little bit around the sunroof.

Overall, a very elegant, smooth, comfortable, quiet car, which was an absolute dream to drive on the open road. A 300 km trip was just like sitting in a lounge for 3 hours. At 90 - 100 MPH it felt like it was only doing 50 MPH. A very high tech car for its age.