There are a number of well known problems with the Grand Scenic but if buying 2nd hand then many of these will have already been dealt with buy the previous owner(s). So arm yourself with the right questions befiore you buy.
Luckily ours has had most of the common faults rectified and we think its a great car. My monor gripe would be that for an mpv there are not enough 12v outlets or cupholders.
Sticking a 1.5 diesel inside a 7 seater was never going to be the smartest move, but then I once had a transit van that had its engine replaced with a 1.6 so I know what struggling is! The Renault Grand Scenic is an okay car all round, but that's all. Some of the inside feels pretty tacky and cheap, a bit, not like it's immediately about to crumble but hardly like it's built to last decades.
Now I bought the Grand Scenic mainly to take the five a side team that I manage to matches and back, and I always get complaints from the guys in the back seats, the dinky ones that open out in the boot. Generally they go to the players who got the fewest injuries! Or the idiot who got sent off or made an own goal. Thankfully I'm up front whatever happens lol.
There are some neat little tricks the car has up its sleeve. Just little things mainly. Like the elec windows will suddenly stop if they detect you've hit the up button with your finger in the gap, never jams your finger in it. I'm sure that'll be useful as our littlun grows up. You can set it to limit your speed as well so you don't accidentally top the speed limit. And I have in the past sometimes 'accidentally' done that ;)
The little display in the front panel that shows all the phone and ipod controls is fantastic. It can also be controlled right from the steering wheel, very nice. You can also set different parts of the car to different temperatures, that's pretty good when my folks are in the back who like it warmer. Just masses of storage space too.
Other features aren't so clever. The glovebox is stupidly small, nothing like what it looks like in the photos. Maybe that's just mine, or I've got some runt version lol. It's annoying, but there's loads of other space besides, just nothing much that's covered up and accessible from the front. The 'tables' in the back I also often hear are not much good, no places to hold cans and things. There's also a bunch of control buttons behind the steering wheel, on a surface that would otherwise be useful for putting stuff on, but you can't in case you hit those buttons. Don't get me wrong there's loads of space otherwise, but sometimes you think that other spaces are being wasted.
It's got decent parking sensor jobbies that help out with parking, but the bonnet does feel like it's twice as big as it needs to be. I've seen other cars that seem to almost do without a bonnet, really tuck the engine up cleverly. That could be better.
Good-ish fuel economy (prob gets better with the later models) and fairly low insurance. I reckon I'll be keeping it for a while yet.