2002 Renault Clio Sport 172 from UK and Ireland - Comments

Air bag warning light came on several times. Dealership suggested a "Renault modification" of cutting the wiring loom for the air bag and soldering in new wires! About 30 miles from the Dealership in Inverness while doing 70 MPH and overtaking a line of traffic the passenger seat airbag deployed. Dealership refuse to repair the car without my insurance paying for it. It is also 5 weeks since the incident and there is still no sign of the seat or airbag. On back order - nice one Renault UK who are not interested in the slightest. Truly remarkable as I was about to place a fleet order for 6 Clio vans and 3 Clio cars (all diesel). They will not respond to my solicitor, so it looks as if they will get the car back.

Great little car.

Pity about the airbag and their safety.

Pity about Renault UK lack of interest.

Pity about dealer's lack of interest.

I have a Clio Sport 172 mark II (September 2001) and the air bag warning light is now coming on also. It's the passenger side air bag - there is a wire up the back of the passenger seat which is strained when moving the seat back/forth to get access to the rear - upon tugging the wire back of the seat the air bag light goes off. Hopefully the air bag will not deploy when I have a passenger. Dealer can't rectify the problem.

Hi, I'm from Slovenia and I'm the owner of Renault Clio 1.2 16V and I'm experiencing the same problem! The side seat airbag light is coming on when moving the seat from and back... When you attach the cables back (as they told me to do this by myself in Renault Slovenia service) the light goes off... In your case, I would sue Renault... because the cars are not LEGO's!

The problem with the air bag warning light can be stopped by simply moving the seat forward and then pushing it back with slightly more force. Saves messing about with wires.

I think that I bought a 'Friday afternoon' Clio 172 (2002 model)

Problems to date are:

* The washer bottle had a fault and leaked (first 50 miles from new)

* The airbag light has a mind of its own - coming on and off.

* The tappets need replacing.

* A manufacturer's fault with the windscreen - which was exempt under the warranty.

* A stereo that doesn't eject the single CD.

Have any other 172 owners had the same problems??

Also what tyres would you recommend instead of the Continentals??

Your insurance company paid for repairs, sounds to me more like driver error than manufacturer otherwise insurance company wouldn't have got involved.

I Bought A new 172 clio from Renault Dealer in Worthing :

The Car has now covered 12,300 miles and overall it has been excellent.

We changed the front tyres after 7,000 miles as they wore down very quickly under normal road driving conditions and replaced them with Goodrich's which feel much much better and are far superior in the wet.

The Airbag light came on for first month, but since then nothing has happened.

Tracking was an initial problem, but was easily rectified.

Overall experience of car has been excellent and I recommend this "fast" car to anyone -

Great fun and well equipped.

Avon tyres are quite cheap for the clio sport. They cost me just over £40 each, which is a bargain compared to Kwik Fit's Michelins at £120.

My front are all worn at 16,000 miles. Rears probably have another 4-5k miles left.

The seat air bag warning light has been Fixed on my Clio sport 3 times by the dealer... I had no idea that the problem could cause it to deploy... they are supposed to be fail safe!

Talking about saftey the drivers seat in the Mark 1 does not always lock into place!

Michelin pilots are the best all weather tire.

I found that there is nothing wrong with the safety of the Renault Clio extreme as I crashed mine at 95mph with a full car and nobody was at all injured apart from a couple of scratches. So there is no actual problem with the Clio safety.