Renault Scenic 1.6 > Reviews (46)

This review refers to the 1.6 Grand (5 seats plus 2 'jump' seats in the boot) Scenic Dynamique (Luxury) 2004 model. I recently drove an '06 model and there appears to be no differences.

The Good
Very stylish and bright instrument display.
Excellent interior lighting - the footwell lights are really good and make a big difference on those dark winter nights.
Lots of storage under seats and under footwells. Storage box between the two front seats is very good (and yep it's got it's own light).
Good turning circle for a large car.
Some automation works very well for instance the radio and all lights turn off automatically when you leave the car. You can also make all open windows & sunroof close automatically when you lock the car from the outside.
Automated windscreen wipers these work well and respond well to splashes from oncoming lorries and so forth - you may have to adjust a control for the size of the water drops (yes you can have rain consisting lots of small drops or few large drops!!) . However and this kind of destroys the whole idea of automation - in order to turn on the automation feature of the wipers you must 'flick' the wipers once after turning on the engine. Unless you do this no amount of rain will budge your wipers.
The air-con/climate control works very well. For instance while the heat is building up the fan is put on low to avoid blasting you with freezing air. Then as the engine temperature build the fan speed is increased to get the warm air into the passenger compartment. The a/c is also great for demisting windows. One poor point is that unlike virtually all other cars there is a triangular section of the front side windows that does not roll down. This prevents you from removing condensation from that section of the outside of the front window by simply rolling it down and back up again. This means your view through the side mirror will remain obscured - dangerous.

Radio
I have a major bone to pick with the 'sattelite' controls for the radio as they call the controls for the radio mounted on the steering column. It actually took me a while to realise why exactly I found the sattelite control frustrating so I'm going to share here. The volume is controlled by two separate buttons you want to go up 3 notches of volume? Then press up 3 times. But the control to change station is a wheel type control which is much harder to control definitively. You want to up 3 stations? Move the wheel a little bit ... oh that's not it .. move up one more .. oops hit a bump .. did that go backwards or forwards? .. is that two stations or 4 stations I've moved .. oh hell lets just press the button on the radio itself. Now to my mind this is totally backwards. Volume is something which you normally want to move by a fuzzy amount - up a little, down a lot etc and so should be controlled by the wheel device. Moving station which you always want to move by an exact amount should be done by some kind of a buttons not a wheel.

There is however a very easy to reach mute feature - when you absolutely must respond to the little people in the rear!

Keys
Renault for some time now have give up keys as a way of starting cars as old hat. The scenic uses a card. It about the same size as a credit card and about 5 times as thick. The card is inserted into the dash and then you use a button to start the car. Having used this system for 6 months now I can say, on balance that they should just give it up. The card is just too unwieldly for pockets. The keys are also not very robust. One of mine has started cracking. I'm not sure how much they are to replace but they are not cheap I guess.

Not so good:
First up, and Renault need to fire someone over this, the spare wheel; there isn't one. None. Not even one of those toy get-you-home wheels. Instead there is a reinflation kit. Maybe not such a bad idea for the mechanically challenged (provided they have had the forethought to figure out how to use before a road-side emergency). But the kit takes a bottle of sealant which costs eur56 (about 35uk stg?). And one bottle is required to re-inflate one tyre. Worse again the manual says the repair is only temporary so you still have to bring the car to the tyre man. And as you have no spare you must bring the entire car to the tyre man you can't just drop of the punctured tyre. Grrr! So Renault have made the experience of having a flat go from something that costs you 10eur and maybe 1hr to something that costs 70eur and several hours. Not very clever guys. The only solace here is that I bought a disposable reinflation kit for 5eur.

In order to put up or down either of the 'jump seats' in the boot you must disturb the entire carpet in the boot. This is very annoying especially in comparison to the Zafira in which you don't have to disturb any carpet at all.

There are little tray tables on the back of the driver and passenger seats for the people in the back. However if you want to be able to use these then you won't be able to have car seat covers. However I was told you may be able to get special desighed one from Renault that accomodate the trays.

Resetting the trip mileometer also reset the estimate of mileage before refuelling and also resets the fuel consumption figures which is a totally unnecessary side-effect.

Equally bizzare is that the miles-to-refuel counter which is really a really useful idea goes blank when the miles left goes under 70ish km. Come on Renault! This is exactly when I need the to know the miles-left. At 400km left you just need to know 'plenty left' but at under 70km you need to know exactly if you must refuel on the way to work of if you can leave it until you get home.

Other
The 1.5 diesel which I test drove is surprisingly nippy (i.e. it's not a total lump of lead) so if you are considering economics or carbon emissions don't write this option off.
The jump seats are quite fine for children. While adults like myself at 6" can fit in anyone over say 5'8" will probably have had quite enough after an hour.
The 3 rear seats are all independently adjustable backwards and forwards (unlike the Zafira which has a 'bench' type rear seat) which does help somewhat in allocating space between those in the back and those in the jump seats.
Some models (not sure which exactly) do not have a spare wheel (not even of the emergency-do-not-exceed-50mph variety). Instead they have a reinfaltion kit. This obviously is something that you should familiarise yourself with.

Fuel Consumption:
According to the trip computer I am getting 36mpg compared to an official figure from Renault for mixed urban/motorwaydriving of 39mpg. I haven't verified that figure however.