Faults:

Nothing. However, I bought it with a faulty temperature sensor of the LPG installation. That's probably why the dealer sold it cheap to me. It wouldn't switch from gasoline to LPG easily, sometimes not at all. I had the thermostat changed, it wasn't it and then I had the temperature sensor changed (the part cost me 24 eur) and the installation started working perfectly. The car felt like new after 200 000 km, apart from some scratches. I'm impressed.

General Comments:

Very practical, reasonably comfortable, fun to drive, noisy after 3000 rpm.

I was not looking for a Renault, but this one had an LPG installation, and here in Germany the installation was more expensive than the car itself. And the car was cheap and good looking. Also, the three separate back seats were a good feature for my GF's kids.

Really nothing went wrong with the car. I drove 20 000 km in 6 months with it and it was very reliable.

The parts are reasonably cheap (Why does engine oil cost so much in Germany???). It is not very easy to work under the hood - everything is tightly crammed but I guess this is true for all new cars. It is not extremely difficult to work under the hood either. And perhaps it saves a few centimeters of the car's length. Ah, one negative side: you do have to remove the battery to change the front left light bulb. Luckily, I had to change the right bulb which wasn't easy either. I had absolutely no way to look inside the housing of the headlight so I had to feel how the bulb was attached. Really, no way. (Except perhaps if I had some elaborate mirror system). At least it was doable.

Perhaps I had luck with a well maintained car, but mechanically it did feel like new (I work as a driver and I usually drive new cars).

The interior is very practical, there are drawers under the front seats and under the two side seats in the rear. There's a huge console under the armrest where you can store many things. So, storage room is more than enough. On the negative side - the glovebox is not too large (but it is ok) and there are no cupholders. (You can buy aftermarket solutions for 5 bucks on ebay but they are not really convenient).

The seats are comfortable, even for long trips. They are not as comfortable as Mercedes seats, but they are still comfortable enough. In a Mercedes you get in with a back pain and you get out without it. In the Scenic you get in without back pain and you get out without back pain. (I sold my previous car mainly because I couldn't get used to the seats).

The driver's position is good and adjustable, the steering wheel is also adjustable for length and height, which makes the driving position really comfortable (although I wish it would have had more adjustable length). Legroom is ok in the front and I think OK in the rear. (I was always the driver but it felt OK whenever I would get in the back seat for whatever reason. The back seats could also be moved back and forth.

My car had a sunroof which I quite liked and which functioned without any problems.

The interior feels plasticky but not in a bothersome way. I mean, you are driving a small Renault, what were you expecting? Therefore you have a reasonable and cheap to maintain car.

The size of the car is perfect - it is short enough so you can easily find a parking spot even when it's tight. Yet, it is comfy for the passengers, the boot is tall, the rear seats fold down (the front passenger seat too) and you can transport all kinds of large boxy objects like a washing machine.

Now to the important part:

The handling is very good. The car feels very agile. I have never had to consider body roll with it and I do make sharp turns. The two liter engine gets you quickly off the mark and accelerates well. It had 6 manual gears. The gear stick is on the dash but it felt comfortable to reach and handle there. It also felt soft after so many kms which I liked. However, 6th gear is quite short. Only 38.5 km/h or so for 1000 revolutions. This means, the higher the speed, the higher the revolutions. The engine gets really really noisy after 3000 rpm (and my exhaust system was not damaged). I had the feeling the engine was gonna crawl into the passenger space as soon as I reached 3000 rpm. This means, the car is OK to drive up to 120 km/h. Then it gets noisy. It is very stable and has a good grip on the road up to about 180 km/h (I haven't tested it further) but it is very loud. Wind noise is generally OK, but the sunroof would whistle very loudly after 150 km/h. I don't know what caused it. It never leaked or something. This would make the passengers a bit nervous. As I like cruising at about 160-170 km/h, I finally started looking for something quieter and in the end I sold the car. I got myself a C200 Kompressor and it love it. You'd say - what were you expecting from a two liter naturally aspirated engine - and you'd be right. But the car offered enormous value for the money and it did a good job saving me expenses when I needed to commute a lot and drive longer distances.

I have answered that I wouldn't buy another Renault not because I am disappointed, I was rather pleasantly surprised by the brand. However, I like a rear wheel drive or an all wheel drive and I wouldn't compromise with this in the future. It just feels more natural. If this wasn't the concern, I'd happily buy a Laguna or a Nissan Leaf. I drove the latest Nissan Leaf from 2020 with 400 km reach on my job and it was quite nice. Renault seems to do a very good job finding a way to keep quality reasonably cheap. However, if you want no compromise, go for a Mercedes :)

Faults:

This was a hire car for two weeks. Nothing went wrong but we all had problems starting the bloody thing, no matter what we did. We had 3 different drivers who all had the same problem. Quite often after trying to start it and then giving up, it would spring to life on it's on accord. Disconcerting.

All doors except the driver's whistled like crazy above 120kmh.

When the windshield washer was used, some of the spray entered the cabin and which meant the cabin smelt like windscreen cleaning fluid.

Clutch was a little squeaky.

General Comments:

We are not making these comments from an ownership perspective, but as a group of people who had the misfortune to have one of these for two weeks and covered a lot of miles in it. We have hired similar vehicles to this before and all the other cars have been fine compared to this.

Plastickey, cheap looking and feeling interior. On the plus side it does have lots of handy storage compartments and seating is versatile. Not a pretty car but the exterior paintwork was OK.

Seats were very uncomfortable on long trips, for all of us. Most of us never had this problem before so it isn't as though we are fussy about this.

Electrical handbrake is a useless gimmick, which can only go wrong one day. Starting the car seemed to be a black art, which none of us could master. Radio likwise, unnecessary complex.

Dash layout hard to read at a glance and stupidly placed in the middle of the dash. Fuel gauge especially dumb, making it hard to tell how much fuel is really left.

Credit card style key-fob stupidly designed so it is had to find the buttons, let alone figure out which is which. Battery fell out of it as well. Just a real cheap feeling thing.

Brakes were very sensitive to light pedal pressure but nothing you can't get used to. Performance was OK. I thought it handled OK for a large vehicle.

It was hard to tell when the indicators were on, because of the ridicolous positioning of the arrows within the mess that is the dashboard. They also make very little noise so you don't get the normal indicator click-click that you do in other cars.

When things ain't broke don't fix it. A traditional key works fine to open and start a car. Normal analogue guages are easier to read. Too many gimmicks which didn't add any value for us. The car must be an auto-electrician's nightmare.