Q Our five-year-old Renault Laguna diesel broke down in France. The RAC
brought my family home but took the car to a nearby Renault dealership,
where I was told that it needed repairs, mostly to the turbo, that cost more
than £2,500. Only when I collected the car was I informed that the
cylinder head gasket would also need fixing within a very short period of
time. If I had known that both repairs were necessary, I would probably have
scrapped the car. My local garage is adamant that the gasket damage must
have been obvious before the turbo repairs and so I feel I’ve been
conned. Do I have any right to redress? — RR from Cambridge
A The old Renault Laguna was unreliable in several respects, most
notably the turbocharger, the electronics and the gearbox.
It’s all too common for several things to go wrong at once, especially on a
model of this age. All the same, you have described every car owner’s
nightmare, and the RAC says it sympathises with your plight.
If the head gasket has gone, this is usually easy to spot without the car
being started. Water contamination in the engine oil will show up on the
dipstick, and oil deposits can be found in the engine-coolant reservoir as
soapy grime.
The question is whether it was reasonable to expect the French Renault dealer
to have looked for this before it started the original repairs. We think
that it would have been. If the dealer had noticed the secondary head gasket
problem and deliberately failed to inform you, that was poor form.
However, Renault insists the second problem could have been identified only
once the vehicle was running again. It adds that the repair costs included
four replacement tyres and that it will not offer any compensation because
the Laguna was out of warranty. Not very helpful.
As to whether you can seek legal redress, Vincents solicitors (01772 555 176, www.vslaw.co.uk),
a firm of motoring-law specialists, advises that any action taken against
the garage would be complicated because you would have to go via the French
courts. However, as the problem took place within the European Union, you could
contact the British arm of the European Consumer Centre, run by the
Institute of Trading Standards (08456 040 503, www.ukecc.net
) and seek help.
Your most likely avenue of success will be if you paid for the repairs with a
credit card. As the matter is potentially a contractual dispute, you could
contact your card provider and request that it cancel any payment made and
then negotiate with the French garage on your behalf. Don’t get your hopes
up, though.
Q My wife and I are planning to downsize from two cars to one. To avoid
this leading to a swift divorce, we’re keen to find one with “memory seats”.
These can remember the ideal seat position for each driver and then
electrically re-adjust on request. Is there a supermini or five-door
hatchback that has this option? I’ve looked at the VW Golf and Audi A3 and
cannot find one. — AW from Bournemouth
A Once you’ve driven a car with memory seats, it’s hard to get used to
manhandling levers again. The problem for you is that this is an expensive
feature for car makers to include. On a supermini, it would constitute too
high a proportion of the overall cost of the car to be feasible — as opposed
to a top-end £50,000-plus luxury car, where the odd thousand or two spent on
such things is less noticeable.
After considerable scouting on your behalf, we could find memory seats as an
option only on the BMW 1-series. This costs £890 for two electrically
operated seats but, as is usual, the memory feature is solely on the
driver’s side.
Q I have a Porsche 911 Carrera 4, in which I cover less than 5,000
miles a year. I’m considering changing cars, and my ideal choice would be
something exactly like a 911 but with four seats — and for less than
£45,000. Any suggestions? — CC from Lowestoft
A Try the Maserati GranSport for size. This offers very similar
performance to your 911 but has the vital rear seats. A search on the new
TimesOnline Car Locator revealed a 2007 model on a 57 plate with less than
5,000 miles on the clock on sale for £43,000. That’s a good saving on the
list price of about £67,000.
Another swift search found a number of Bentley Continental GT coupés on sale
for less than £50,000, though they were typically three years old. This car
is not as overtly sporty as your Porsche but, thanks to an output of more
than 550bhp, it is capable of nearly 200mph and will accelerate from 0 to
60mph in a mere 4.6sec while still carrying four occupants and their luggage
in comfort. Food for thought.
Q A couple of months ago the timing belt went on my Ford Focus. The car has
a full Ford service history and has covered 62,000 miles in its six-year
life span. The owner’s manual states the belt requires changing only after
100,000 miles or 10 years. As the repair bill was almost £1,300, I feel
cheated. After all, I have abided by the recommended service intervals.
Despite the car’s age, shouldn’t this job have been covered by the warranty?
— SG from Aberdeenshire
A Incredibly enough, Ford does guarantee the cam belt of a Focus for 10
years or 100,000 miles. However, as drivers of most marques will attest, car
dealers are consummate experts at finding loopholes to wriggle out of
repairs that should be done under warranty.
In this case, the Ford cam belt’s warranty does not apply to ancillary items
such as the belt tensioner or pulleys. If the belt broke because it was
faulty, then this should have been a warranty claim. It could equally have
been, for example, that the belt itself was fine but that a damaged pulley
caused it to snap — in which case it would not be covered.
The problem is that the cause of the break should have been verified before
the belt was replaced. Now that the job has been done, it’s impossible to
check the belt’s condition so you are now on a sticky wicket in proving your
case.
However, if your invoice shows that only the belt was replaced, this suggests
that it had failed and you should pursue the issue with the dealer. If the
invoice says that, say, the tensioner was also replaced, the dealer could
argue that this is what caused the belt to snap, in which case you would
have no claim. Just to complicate matters further, it would have made sense
for the dealer to have replaced the tensioner at the same time as a faulty
cam belt, even if it was not trying to cover its tracks.
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