Cheap, high performance, but you need in-depth knowledge to avoid huge bills from the main dealer!
Turbo water supply hose split
Valve spring broken
Big end bearings worn excessively.
Extremely potent engine, but watch out for faulty electrics - particularly coolant temp sensor circuit!
Would you buy another car from this manufacturer? Yes
Review Date: 8th April, 2002
By far the most elegant and comfortable car that I have ever owned - a poor mans Bentley
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.
Would you buy another car from this manufacturer? Don't Know
Review Date: 15th September, 2001
Sorry to hear you had so much bad luck with your model. I purposefully sought out a pretty plain model mechanically. A 2.2 manual 5 speed that is just wonderful. Fast, economical, reliable and cheap (to buy and run). Best value car I've ever owned!
Paul - Hamilton NZ.
I have a 25 GTX and your problem with "electrical fault" occurs when having a strong electrical energy consumption. This appeared to me when I changed the old alternator (defective regulator) with another one which was weaker (60 A instead of 75 A), and every time I use electrical windows + lights + ventilation + window cleaner results in electrical power getting under 12v which leads to this message. You have to get a stronger alternator or avoid using more electrical devices at once. Adrian Surugiu, Romania.
I have owned a 25 GTS with 2.0 litre engine and a manual gearbox for 3 years now. I hoped it had been that top model with all electrical devices there could be. But the more I read about the electrical faults of those devices I'm happy I have only the basic model.
Did Volvo ever run a Renault V6?
They ran each other's V6 -- I believe it is colloquially referred to as the PRV V6 (Peugeot-Renault-Volvo) 2.7 6-cylinder engine fitted to cars like the Renault 30, Volvo 264, Peugeot 604.
24th Mar 2004, 16:22
I had a 1985 Renault 25 V6 Turbo. I chipped it and increased the boost giving me a nice 260bhp in 1988. Was cruising down the M1 one night - got caught doing 145mph. Amazingly my inept words to the 12 arresting officers that had chased me for 20 minutes without my knowing was "I didn't realize I was going that fast officer!". Ended up with a healthy ban for a while - unfortunately it resulted in me having to sell the car.
I loved Kenneth Kendel's voice from the onboard computer - but I remember one night on the motorway (doing a much more respectable 70mph) when the stereo was cut out and Ken's tones shouting "BRAKES not working..." - scared the pants off me. I lightly checked the brakes - which seemed to work - pulled off onto the hard shoulder, walked around the car, checked the rear, the pads and disks, everything. In total confusion I went back inside the car - pressed the "status" button and received the reply "all systems working fine" - evidently there was some sort of static short that created the erroneous message.
The worst thing was the computer was tied directly off the speedo - and the speedo had a problem where all of a sudden, it would go to zero. You had to find a stretch of road where it was possible to reverse the car 10 feet or so, and the speedo would activate again. Unfortunately, if you didn't do this, you had no idea what fuel you had left - the fuel gauge had a tendancy to zero out if it went under 2 gallons left or so. I guess Renault believed if you could afford their car, you could afford to keep the fuel level above 2 gallons!!!
It was one of my favourite cars I ever owned. Lots of speed, lots of gadgets, lots of leather - but you had to have the manual transmission. You could smoke anyone back in the late 80's with it - and people would literally be shocked at this behemoth accelerating away from them.
Peugeot and Renault probably made the best affordable cars in the 80's. Wonder what happened?!!!