1985 Renault 25 V6 Injection from Australia and New Zealand - Comments

Endless electrical faults - mostly minor but frustrating and sometimes expensive due mainly to the complexity of tracing the faults.

Replaced all of the rubber hoses at 98000 miles. There is a rubber hose right in the valley under the fuel injection which joins a metal cooling pipe to the water pump on the V6 engine, and the metal pipe runs right down the valley to be joined at the back of the motor to the rest of the cooling system. The rubber joiner perished and had to be replaced. The whole fuel injection system had to come off to get to it. The cost was $900NZD to fix.

The voice synthesiser kept saying," Warning, Electrical System Faulty, Stop engine immediately." for no apparent reason. When you stopped the engine, it kepts saying,"Check belt immediately, if good, drive to nearest garage." At times, I felt like driving it to the garbage disposal rather than the garage. The Auto Electrician checked it out but found no apparent fault $500 NZD later.

The starter motor spat the dummy after 110,000 miles.

In the end, the Automatic Transmission spat the dummy at 150,000 miles, costing nearly $5,000 NZD to repair. I ended up bailing out of the car once that happened. The mechanic swapped the Renault for a rusty Volvo 360 GLE with a recond motor and good gearbox.

Rust began to appear around the sunroof.

This car would be by far the most comfortable car that I have ever owned. I endorse other peoples comments about it being a poor mans Bentley. However, it was extremely expensive to maintain, and plagued with frustrating little electrical problems. The engine was beautiful, smooth and extremely reliable. However, the transmission (an electronically controlled 3 Stage Automatic) was an absolute dog.

An extremely well finished car, with beautiful big soft leather electric seats. The seat electrics gave no problems. No rust problems, apart from a little bit around the sunroof.

Overall, a very elegant, smooth, comfortable, quiet car, which was an absolute dream to drive on the open road. A 300 km trip was just like sitting in a lounge for 3 hours. At 90 - 100 MPH it felt like it was only doing 50 MPH. A very high tech car for its age.

Sorry to hear you had so much bad luck with your model. I purposefully sought out a pretty plain model mechanically. A 2.2 manual 5 speed that is just wonderful. Fast, economical, reliable and cheap (to buy and run). Best value car I've ever owned!

Paul - Hamilton NZ.

I have a 25 GTX and your problem with "electrical fault" occurs when having a strong electrical energy consumption. This appeared to me when I changed the old alternator (defective regulator) with another one which was weaker (60 A instead of 75 A), and every time I use electrical windows + lights + ventilation + window cleaner results in electrical power getting under 12v which leads to this message. You have to get a stronger alternator or avoid using more electrical devices at once. Adrian Surugiu, Romania.

I have owned a 25 GTS with 2.0 litre engine and a manual gearbox for 3 years now. I hoped it had been that top model with all electrical devices there could be. But the more I read about the electrical faults of those devices I'm happy I have only the basic model.