2004 Renault Grand Scenic Expression (+ Comfort Pack) from UK and Ireland - Comments

New car, but delivered with:

Stains to interior;

Rubber stop fell off under folding rear seat;

Small dent on rear door;

Some broken trim;

Uneven panel fit and bump strips don't line up accurately;

Some rattles;

Brakes have long travel before any bite;

Brake squeal;

Automatic handbrake sometimes doesn't release at the first attempt.

Driver's seat already showing some wear (frizzing of cloth).

Overall car is pretty good though build quality lets it down. In retrospect I would have chosen the 1.9 dCi with 6-speed gearbox. Dynamique trim offers better value than Expression (adds alarm, alloys, leather wheel and gear lever for £500 on list price). The 5-star NCAP (crash safety) rating is reassuring. Be careful which options you chose as in some cases you will not be able to have a spare wheel fitted (£100 option). Taken altogether the design is a compromise and does not really do the job of a full-sized people carrier. If this is what you need look elsewhere.

Engine: smooth and quiet for a diesel; pulls well between 1,800 and 3,500 rpm. Lacks initial punch though and higher rpm achieves little except more noise. Averaged 51.9 mpg on a return journey from UK to Spain via Channel Ports despite 2 adults and 4 children plus holiday luggage on board.

Gearbox: well-placed lever; light if long-ish movements. Well-placed ratios though 6-speed would be better on motorways.

Steering: light and reasonably good feel. A touch low-geared and plastic wheel is uncomfortable on long journeys.

Handling: Safe if uninvolving. A trace of top-heaviness when pushing harder. Grips well.

Brakes: Though light, powerful and well-balanced the initial travel is long leading to jerkiness when they finally bite. The automatic handbrake is a slight pain as it doesn't always release the first time you try to pull away.

Comfort: Well padded generously sized seats with good legroom. However, folding seats in boot proved cramped and uncomfortable over long distances, even for a 7-year old. Generally quiet unless engine worked hard. Some wind noise at speed. Optional sun-roof makes tremendous wind noise except at low speeds.

Storage: Excellent provision with large air-conditioned glove-box, 4 capacious door pockets, 4 under-floor compartments, drawers under the front seats and side pockets in the boot. I couldn't find anywhere to store a warning triangle though. Boot is large 5-up, reasonable 6-up, and better than the competition (Zafira, Touran, etc) 7-up.

Electronics: There are lots of these (on-board computer, hands-free card - no keys needed -, automatic lights and wipers) and so far they all work perfectly. Although the wipers do need a fairly well spotted screen before they operate.

Warranty: Note 3rd year of cover is from UK dealer network (no good if you are in Europe) and breakdown cover excludes "non-warranty" incidents such as punctures, running out of fuel or losing the keys. You may need to upgrade or take out additional cover for peace of mind.

Actually an update of my previous review at 6 months/9,600 miles.

Initial impressions have been borne out. Car is mainly very good on motorway, but can feel clumsy and a little underpowered around town. Potholes, humps and road repairs can catch out the usually smooth suspension. Fuel consumption remains in the low 50s overall. Oil consumption very low, less than a litre used to date despite running in. Top speed so far is 111 mph with a little more to come I think.

Surprisingly, turned out to be sensitive to side winds. The strong side winds usually to be found on the AP7 and A9 (Catalonian coast route from Spain to France) buffeted the car very noticeably. Combined with the uncomfortably hard steering wheel this left my hands beginning to blister. Admittedly I did drive 800 miles that day without any discomfort from the driver's seat. Highish build is presumably to blame.

Faults developed: rattle from under car (exhaust?) when switching on or off. Brakes can still stick on at times (it feels like a front wheel as well as occasional handbrake problem). This can make pulling out of junctions tricky at times as car can nearly stall. On the other hand, brakes are superb at speed, powerful light and progressive). No time to take it back to the dealer yet and not sure they will know how to fix it. Heater fan developed a ticking noise, but cured itself.

Seat trim seems to wear quickly and snag easily.

Rear pair of seats seem to have got smaller - or have my children grown? They really only suit the under sevens because of lack of legroom. Storage space excellent and practical.

All electronics continue to function well. Keyless entry is great. The rain sensing wipers don't always get it right though, sometimes scraping a nearly dry screen, at other times leaving it briefly flooded.

Controls for headlamp levelling and panel rheostat badly positioned, low down out of sight and easily confused.

My four year old discovered how to take off the electronic handbrake manually (I haven't!). Thankfully he was sitting on my lap and not alone in the front of the car at the time.

I have had a 1.6 Grand Scenic Authentic since April 2004, it now has 75,000KM under its belt. Build quality has not been a real issue.

From new it would always have dead spots when accelerating during cold spells, Heat shield rattles on exhaust during engine start and stop (Always after roads are wet) Dealer just seems to bend it back into shape??

Upholstery (Grey/Black) seems to stain very easily and is wearing slightly around side of the driver seat.

Only big problem was the electronic cable sensing the clutch depress for start snapped, main dealer did disgraceful repair that lasted 3 days (Extended damaged cable with speaker wire and wrapped ends of wire then covered with insulating tape) all because it was easier then removing panels to repair it properly. I was told that I would have to wait for a week before it could be looked at again so I took it to another dealer who look after it promptly (Can you guess who gets the servicing now?)

Overall it’s a great car and has preformed well, fuel consumption is quite good, the 1.6 doesn't pack any real punch, but in a trade of against consumption I am very happy.

My main worry is that some of the dealer network (in Ireland) lacks the necessary skills (I would consider cable repair/replacement a basic skill) to look after cars with a high level of electronic integration.

I would most certainly buy another, choosing the right dealer would be the trick!

I have a Renault Grand Scenic registered October 2004 - I have had a couple of problems with it - with have been done under warranty, but nothing major & was quite happy with the car - However now the warranty is up problems are starting to appear

- The drivers door mirror still retracts by use of the internal control knob - but no longer goes back out again!!

- And just recently the weather got a bit warmer so I decided to open my sunroof - only to find that it will not open!! Turn the dial & absolutely nothing happens - thought this was a bit strange, but problems occur checked fuse etc fine - my husband also had a Renault Scenic Jan 2004 so we decided to try his sunroof & he also has the same problem - My car has been to Renault Dealer where diagnostic check was done - diagnostic check was fine only thing that they can suggest in a new motor required (maybe 2) @ £270.00 per motor putting the job price to approx £630.00!!! Has anybody else had this sort of problem - £630.00 to get my sunroof to work seems madness.

Our panoramic roof works fine at the moment, but needed attention twice in the warranty period. They are very problematic.

To be honest, if mine dies again I won't bother getting it fixed. We tend to just roll the blinds back and use it to let more light into the car anyway, preferring to use the air conditioning to keep the car cool.

Our Grand Scenic (2004 Dynamique 1.9dCi) has been quite good, but does suffer stupid niggling problems mostly with the electrical system. Bizarrely, these tend to happen for a day or two and then "fix themselves" and not reoccur. I think you just have to accept this buggy electrical setup as part of Renault ownership and not let it bother you. We've had:

Two sunroof faults

One replacement exterior door handle. The locking button on a second has stopped working

Intermittent alarm haywireness.

"Check airbag" on the display which disappeared as soon as the engine was switched off, and never came back.

Intermittent resetting of the trip meter and clock (but not the radio code!)

"Check Injection" warning which turned out to be nothing more serious than a duff glow plug - eight quid and 10 minutes work. This is the only time the engine has been touched outside of routine servicing.

Electric window regulator failure just out of warranty, which in fairness, Renault UK paid for as a goodwill gesture.

In spite of the problems, we still love it, and mechanically it has been superb. In fact the dCi engine once warmed up is smoother and quieter than a lot of petrol engines with just a light "tinkling" noise under power to give away that it's a diesel. It's just a shame Renault can't get their act together in terms of quality control, as the design of the car is just superb. Quality is poor though - We also have a 125,000 mile Volvo S60 that feels newer and tighter than this 48,000 mile Renault, and has a 100% reliability record.

Still it could be worse. We could have bought a Touran. If you think the Scenic is unreliable, try one of these.

I just read that someone had a check injection message and Iit was just a glow plug which took 10 minutes to fix but we have just been told by our local garage that it's a massive job as the dash board has to come off and then they have to mess around with the electrics. It doesn't seem right but then we have a renault megane scenic so it might be different.

I also had the injection warning and was quoted some very high prices to rectify the problem, even after paying for a diagnostic was told it was the fourth injector. Car was running well, so after reading comments on here I had it serviced at my local independent garage and requested glow plugs to be changed, and 2 were blown, and the warning has now gone.

I wrote the comment about glowplugs causing this error in my Grand Scenic review. Unfortunately "Check Injection" is a generic fuel system error message covering a whole list of faults from trivial to terminal. You need the Renault CLIP diagnostic system to read the fault codes to determine where the fault is, which of course is not available to Joe Public. The good news however, is that it is possible to pinpoint or eliminate glowplugs by doing the following:

Start the engine from cold, and take it on a drive to get it completely up to operating temperature. Once you have done this, pull over somewhere safe, switch off the engine and ignition.

Restart the engine immediately. If your "Check injection" message is a glowplug fault, it will have cleared itself (this is only temporary - it will come back next time the engine cools, but this confirms the diagnosis). Buy a set of glowplugs and you're sorted. If it still says "Check Injection" you have another fault elsewhere.

These are generally horrible cars to work on, but in fairness, changing glowplugs on these (the 1.9 at least - never worked on a 1.5) is no harder than changing spark plugs on most petrol engines. Easily accessible, and the leads push on rather than making you deal with those fiddly 6mm nuts. I did all four in well under 30 minutes.