RENAULT MEGANE 1.5 dCi 106 Privilege 5dr (2008)

Economical

It might be a bit of a retirement-mobile I suppose, I do see some of my other friends of advanced years driving a Renault Megane, but it seems to be a family car too. Whoever buys it, they've made a good choice. I've found it to be mostly very good, with just a few little annoying points.

It's very comfy inside, which was one of the main things we were after as we were trading in quite a bone shaker of a Honda Civic. The Renault Megane 1.5 DCi has very supportive drivers seats, although we have recently found out that the back seats can be a little restrictive for taller passengers. It's the head room that is just a little lacking, the roof curves in a little too early. There's also a storage cubby hole that juts into the knees of the centre passenger in the back, which is quite silly.

I have to say the boot in the Renault Megane is an awful lot smaller than our old Civic, but then we never used much of the boot space anyway. It still easily fits our suitcases for hols, although it might be a bit of a squeeze if we still had kids with us and their stuff. Younger kids might be ok.

We never had a sat navigation thingy in previous cars, and didn't bother with that as an option. We saw some photos of it, and it just seemed to swallow the whole of the top of the dash. We may adventure into satnav land at some point, but only with a little separate one.

The sloping bonnet made parking a bit of a challenge to begin with. It's actually quite hard to judge where the front of the car is. You get used to it quite quickly, but take care at first.

In terms of reliability, the Megane 1.5 DCi has had a few things needing doing, but only very early on, which seemed like remedying lazy factory work more than anything. It's running fine now and we expect it to keep on going like this for some years to come.

Almost forgot something important: the side windows are a very silly design, which sprays rain in your face if you open them the tiniest amount. I almost forgot about that because as soon as I realised that I went and bought myself some after-market rain shields. They clip onto the door quite easily and they completely solve the problem. Ask your local car parts shop, they'll know what you mean. I can't imagine being without them. I can actually see people being quite annoyed with the Renault Megane as a result of this, which is a shame as it's very easily remedied.