Renault Mégane CC

[PeterS]

Now that summer is nearly here , and since I'm back in the UK had have plenty of time, I thought I'd do a quick review of our (now departed) Mégane CC. We sold it after 3 years and 34,000 miles, so I thought I'd briefly summarise our time with the car.

To set the scene, we ordered the car back in August '04, when the CC was still a relatively rare sight. It was delivered in November '04 and replaced a '53 plate 1.6 Privilege hatch, which was written off after being rear-ended on the A3 That had been in Ottoman blue, which I still think is one of the best colours for the hatch.

We chose Flame Red for the CC though as it provides a good contrast to the beige interior. I still think it looks great (at least, when it's clean...). The only option we specified was the Luxury pack, which we'd also had on the hatch and which, at the time, included the 17" wheels, full leather and pop-up roll over bars. I'm pleased to say that these were never tested

A silly omission on our part was heated seats; they were in the Luxury pack on the hatch but not, unfortunately, on the CC and we didn't order them

The interior of the car was a nice place to be, at least if you were in the front , with the light interior enhanced by the light coming in through the roof whether it was up of down and, with the exception of heated seats, had everything you'd need as standard. The seats were very comfortable and showed virtually no sign of wear after 3 years. The light coloured floor mats on the other hand did look a little worse for wear, but would be easily and cheaply replaced.

We ordered the car in 1.6 form, which we'd had in the hatch (and a sporthatch that preceded it), where it was reasonably nippy. The CC is a much heavier car and, to be honest, that did sometimes cause frustration on A and B roads as it had limited overtaking potential. The car was definitely more of a cruiser than a press-on kind of car but, when driven in a more relaxed manner, was a very nice, relaxing car to drive. High speed cruising was perfectly OK, it just took a little while to wind up

The novelty of being able to drop the roof never really wore off, and mechanism was certainly given a pretty heavy workout, being used 5 or 6 times some days in the summer. The heater was powerful enough to be able to use the roof pretty much all year round; in fact it was in use right up to the day we sold it. Nothing ever went wrong with it, and it didn't leak. Wind noise from the roof was muted, even at high speed (on the continent of course), and subjectively was no worse than that from the panoramic roof on the hatch.

Over the 34k miles we averaged around 33mpg, though the car was used for a fair few short journeys. On a longer run it would do around 36mpg which I thought was pretty good. Our car was on 18k mile service intervals, so was only serviced once. The car used no oil, and never broke down. It had 4 replacement tyres, a set of front pads and disks and a set of replacement wipers. One headlight bulb failed after around 25k miles, and after 2.5 years the batteries in both hands-free cards went flat.

Other than that it had two unscheduled trips to the dealer, one to sort out a de-phaser issue, which was handled efficiently by the dealer, and the second a recall for something to do with the roof (can't remember the details)

In summary, a great car that performed virtually faultlessly over three years I still think the design looks as crisp today as when it was new and is, IMO, by far the best looking of all the mid size CCs (Ford, Peugeot, Vauxhall).

If we were ordering the same car again I'd definitely have heated seats, though I think leather is now standard on the Privilege so would give the luxury pack a miss. Cruise control would also be nice. Biggest change would be to the engine; the 2.0 LPT sounds interesting, or possibly a dCI...

Just my thought...hope they are of interest

Peter

[Rich_Bee]

I bought a new one last year for my wife (birthday present, check me out ) and she loves it. As do our two girls who are 4 and 7 - they have enough rear space with the booster seats in it but I wouldn't want to be an adult in the back for any length of time. They all love it with the roof down and as it's our second car it only gets used for the school run/run about in the week and for weekends when the suns out. we went for the 1.6 Dynamique with climate, limiter, cruise and 17's in metallic black. Not the fastest thing on the road by a long margin but for cruising around in the sun it's great.

As I think has been menioned previously, they shake about a lot as structurally they are still a bit soft, the engine means spirited driving is not really possible but I only paid £13,200 brand new for it (simpledeal was the company I think) last May on a car that our Renault dealer wouldn't budge below £18,500 for I couldn't complain. Yes it's an import but I think my wife would castrate me if I sold it so not fussed either way about residuals

[PeterS]

Glad you're enjoying it If you want a spare wheel/tyre (16" steel) plus replacment boot carpet to replace the standard tyre inflation foam let me know; it'll only end up in the tip at some point

Peter

[BLUEBOY]

Glad you're enjoying it If you want a spare wheel/tyre (16" steel) plus replacment boot carpet to replace the standard tyre inflation foam let me know; it'll only end up in the tip at some point

Peter

Just bought a CC and as you know there is no spare wheel, looking at other sites there seems to be some difficulty about finding one and storage. Can you shine any light on this please?

[PeterS]

Welcome to TSN

I bought a spare wheel and replacement boot carpet from our Renault dealer; since got rid of both the car and the spare, but will have a dig around and see if I can find the part numbers

Peter