I'd like to be able to blame someone else for the mistake I made in buying a renault Laguna, but in the end it was my own fault.

We bought a Laguna V6 Auto around three years ago (2 years old second hand) after changing jobs and taking a car allowance rather than company car.

We'd done some looking around and the spec seemed good and the car nice. It had an RAC check via the garage and service history. Price was about per magazine recommended for the model/year.

Anyway buying it was when the problems started. Over the two years we owned it we had:-

Failure of Airconditioning.
Problems with Auto box (kangarooing).
Oil level sensor problems (which involved three dashboard replacements, two sensor replacements and still never got fixed - I gave up in the end).
Dashboard occasionally dying whilst driving (cause never found).

Fortunately we had a full warranty for the period otherwise this lot would have cost us a few thousand! However the service staff at the local Renault dealership did know me by name after two years!

However the salt in the wounds came about a year ago when I took a new job with two company cars. Hence we decided that rather than it sit in the garage
depreciating we should try and sell it.

We didn't want the aggro of selling privately, so decided to sell to a dealer. At wchich point we found that no dealer was interested. Renault dealers were chocca full of pre-registered cars which they were doing ridiculous offers on. We called other garages - no interest. After going through the phone book with a fine-toothed comb we finally found one garage willing to buy it for around £3000 (We had paid around £15,000 for it two years earlier).

So if you are thinking of buying a second-hand Renault Laguna yourself, just throw £12000 pounds away instead.

My only consolations are:

a) It was quite comfortable and reasonable to drive when it was wo
rking.

b) If we'd bought a new one we would have lost even more.

Summary:
Buy something else, unless it's a company car and you can't choose anything else and you don't mind spending lots of time at the dealership being fixed.

Oh and it eats petrol (I managed an average of 17mpg - assuming the trip computer worked...)