2003 Renault Grand Espace Privilege from UK and Ireland - Comments

The Privilege specification delivered is NOT the same as the specification at time of order (by the removal of dash mounted CD and rain/light sensors).

The tail gate has been difficult to close since new, but the tail gate warning light has detected it when open. This week, however, the tail gate flew open without any warning lights at all. Fortunately, this did not happen at speed.

Garage can find nothing wrong and nor have they changed anything physical to do with the boot catches, sensors, etc. This does not give me any confidence that it might not happen again - and maybe next time at speed!!

Renault UK have been slow to help resolve this issue. The car is still in the garage.

I absolutely love this new Grand Espace. It has just been found to be the safest car on the road (but we don't yet know whether or not this is a lone fault or something more generic).

It is the Renault support for a new vehicle that is sadly lacking. Coupled with an unexplained delay in the original delivery of over 5 weeks, I am beginning to wonder whether or not there have been problems before.

Lastly, the sun-roof is an optional extra. Don't be fooled by ALL the pictures in the brochure showing the bright sunny interior. It is great, but it will cost you £1500.

Had a similar tailgate problem on my Toyota LiteAce Wagon. Solved by opening a door or window before closing tailgate (prevents air pressure from building up).

I too have suffered this problem with the tailgate of my 2004 Megane which on occasion just bounces open again. My dealership has not been able to find any fault with the catch. If, as you say it is caused by the air pressure in the cabin (which makes sense, as I often find that front seat passengers in the car have trouble closing the door properly) isn't there some way that the manufacturer could have a release for the air pressure?

You quite wrongly perpetuate the myth that this car is the safest on the road. The EuroNCAP tests simply rank cars in terms of their relative crashworthiness, and do not take into account the relative likelihood that any car will in fact breakdown, or suffer mechanical failure at speed etc. How safe is it for example for an electrical fault to cause loss of power steering whilst on the motorway, or for the brakes to fail whilst approaching a roundabout, or for the suspension to break because of shoddy workmanship? All of these things have been described for the Espace on this and other similarly excellent consumer motoring websites. The fact is, you are much more likely to unintentionally try out the crashworthiness of an Espace than any other MPV, so thank heavens it is relatively safe under crash impact!!