Renault Espace

Lovely interior - shame about the useless loss of power problem

Totally fed up with our 3.0 automatic Espace. Ran fine for less then three years (1.5 years when we bought it, very low mileage). At 65k km on the clock it developed a loss of power problem and couldn't accelerate up hills. Dealer couldn't identify any problem and put some cleaning thing through it which seemed to help. A month later deep into the West Coast of Scotland with no garage in sight the problem recurred. We had a lot of difficulty crossing mountainous central Scotland to get it to a dealer in Dundee. Managed a fix (£700 later) and we drove back to Brussels. We were a little shocked by the €1.7k service bill at Christmas, as there didn't really seem to be any problem other than a slightly tired-out battery, but coughed up. To our disgust the loss of power problem recurred on a trip to the UK (at 73k km). The Dundee dealer had suggested that the next stage of fix was to remove the engine to replace the solenoids (they estimated seven hours of labour just to remove the engine; solenoids cost £450...). Needless to say we're looking at changing the car before the summer's driving holiday back to west coast of Scotland. Sadly our high spec Espace, which we bought to replace a long-serving ten year old Chrysler, is now worth less than €5k. Wondering about a 2nd hand VW Sharan or Ford Galaxy, though very hard to find automatic transmission here. Won't ever buy another Espace, which is a shame as other than the unreliability it was the perfect car for our four son family.

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