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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E-MAIL YOUR QUESTIONS TO carclinic@sunday-times.co.uk Alternatively, write to Car Clinic, InGear, The Sunday Times, 1 Pennington Street, London E98 1ST. Please supply us with a daytime telephone number, the town or city you live in and as much detail about your car as you can. We regret that we cannot send personal replies or deal with every letter, so please do not send original documents or SAEs. Advice is offered without legal responsibility