2000 Renault Megane Liberte review from UK and Ireland

Ignition coils fail prematurely.

Car Dashboard goes into error mode every morning in winter.

Good.

Good safety features, ABS,5 airbags, three point seatbelt in middle back seat, side impact bars etc.

Low insurance group.

Poor.

The Renault Megane Petrol engine uses an individual coil for each spark plug. All four of these have now failed prematurely.

On cold mornings the car dashboard goes into error mode when first started. This clears whenever the car has driven 100yards and is stopped and restarted. We're talking every morning in winter.

The main Renault dealer stated that the ABS computer required reprogramming. Didn't fix fault. Car taken back. "A multi-way block connector was loose". Didn't fix fault. "It's either the ABS wiring loom or ABS servo - we'll replace the wiring loom first and if that doesn't work, we'll try the servo".

Now to me this smacks of poor servicing techniques. Remember I'm paying for all this. They're talking about over £1000 which I have to pay for them to make a diagnosis. No guarantee this will resolve issue, no rebate on unnecessary work carried out.

Despite having raised this issue with the service department and customer services department of the local dealer and twice with Renault UK, they have made no attempt to contact me never mind resolve the issue. Seems to be a total disregard for customer satisfaction.

The main Renault dealer from whom I bought the car took a shortcut wiring the electrics on a tow-bar fitted to this new car as a result of which some of the lights did not operate and the car had to be returned for remedial action. This was a deliberate action by the engineer as the cables in question had been cut short.

Road handling is poor, you can feel the rear end slip and lurch as you corner.

Comfort is poor on long journeys.

The gearbox is obviously designed for a more powerful engine as 2nd gear has no drive until the car is traveling at speed.