junkYARD 2000 Renault Megane 1.6 Review
First Look:
With the original Peugeot sent to the scrap yard I wanted another car to park up in East London and not particularly worry about.
So my dad gave me his old car.
No, my dad is not at all bothered about cars. He wants something cheap to run, maintain and basically works okay so he can potter around at the weekend.
Thus, the bland and completely devoid of character Renault Megane.
Okay, so it had air conditioning and comfy seats, but that was about it.
In some respects I quite liked the squat design, it was a nice color silver and the interior was a comfortable and light place to be.
The seats were so comfortable but everything else inside was cheap and nasty. All of the buttons and switch gear was ill thought out and on a budget.
The interior lights were bright, though.
Price Paid:
£Free
Price Sold:
£Gave it back to my dad who sold it for about £400
Miles:
52,000
Overview and Experience
This was given to me so I cannot complain too much, but if I didn’t, you wouldn’t really grasp at how feeble this car was.
I don’t mind humdrum cars if there’s at least some sort of interesting part about it.
However, this had nothing, this is a real shame because Renault make some very interesting and brilliant fast cars such as the Megane and Clio sport, not to mention the crazy Vel Satis or Avantime.
This was just so run of the mill, white goods as you could get.
Okay, the a/c worked, as did the electric windows and as already mentioned the interior lights were amazing when trying to find something in the car when it was dark.
However, the rest of it was just woeful.
It wasn’t particularly spacious, it wasn’t very fast being just a 1.6 petrol with about 115bhp.
I guess it did okay on fuel reaching about 40mpg but the quality just wasn’t there.
The interior plastics were terrible and cheap. The gear stick wasn’t comfortable and if you held on to it while driving it would vibrate loads.
The wheels were steel with cheap, thin and flimsy wheel covers that broke and came off.
The rear arches started to rust too.
My parents loved the comfy seats though…
Mostly it was reliable, however, it occasionally threw up a technical glitch that just couldn’t be properly diagnosed or repaired which was to do with the immobilizer.
Just on its own accord it wouldn’t start, the starter would go but it wouldn’t catch. It was highly frustrating.
When I had it given to me the balancing was out so the steering wheel would vibrate around motorway speeds and I couldn’t be bothered to rectify it. I remember the exhaust once blowing through so it was deafening for a while and the battery drained in the snow after being left at the side of the street for about two weeks unused.
The thing was, I just didn’t want to use it, it had no redeeming feature or excitement to it.
Even the old 106 I had was fun. It was small, handled like a go cart and I loved rinsing the old 1.5 agricultural diesel engine within an inch of its life because it wanted more.
The old 106 would bounce and crash up and down curbs, the high torque and low revving engine gave great off road ability along old tracks or across fields, it was good in snow too.
Want more muscle and energy? > READ THIS!
It did once provide a bit of use, though.
I had just split from a past girlfriend and we had booked a long weekend away to Copenhagen…
So, early that Saturday morning I thought I would go by myself without telling her, it was about 4am and I walked the 10 minutes to the car which had been stood by the side of the road for some time and it had been snowing.
It took me about 10 minutes to actually get in the car and not without breaking one of the rear door handles…the car had frozen solid and miraculously the car just about started although the battery didn’t seem to have much juice left in it.
I managed to get the Heathrow just in time to realize I had forgotten my passport. This is perhaps the only memorable moment I had in the Megane…
Eventually I was really bored of this and gave it back to my dad who then sold it on.
