New car advice, a non driver asks !

GrumpyJo

That's a shame. It's funny you mentioned the S Max is the reason your wife wanted to change as the F in law was on the school run for us one evening and he's the type that likes to get there nice and early. While he was waiting one of the mums approached him to poke around inside his motor and ask him questions about it. The following week she rocks up in her own S Max !

He had very little go wrong with it over the 8 years he had it averaging 7-8k miles per year. He had a battery fail on him when we were at a zoo where he had to pay rip off AA price for a replacement and in the final year he had it we were on holiday in York and he had all sorts of electrical issues that cost him £700-£800 to get repaired. That aside, it was pretty reliable

Zincubus

I know nothing about cars and the garage was the main Renault dealership ..


From memory after I complained they took the car in and decided that the problem had been a faulty HT lead or something all along and it had caused the coils to fail  . Also the dodgy lead couldn't have been traced by their computer system for whatever reason ..

IronGiant

Ah, that would explain it then   First time we had one go the RAC came out and changed it. After that I made sure we had an after market set at home so we could do it ourselves.

IronGiant

I think they were bullsh*tting you, Meganes don't have HT leads.  What they do have is coils that fail a lot

C320UK

Some great suggestions here, in addition to the CRV and the S-Max it’s also worth looking at the Mazda 5, Mazda CX-5 and Toyota Rav 4.

On the MPV front the Seat Alhambra is definitely worth a look too although they are quite large!

outoftheknow

There are few mums at our local school I wouldn’t mind doing that for me!

RBZ5416

If the S-Max is out of budget, maybe have a look at the C-Max?

Garrett

As for reliable makes I found this:  link to below website.
The most recent JD Power UK Vehicle Dependability Survey was published in August and ranked car manufacturers on the average number of problems per hundred cars. These could range from a small squeak to a total engine failure, so most vehicles had at least one issue

Kia and Volvo were named the most reliable manufacturers, tied in first place with 83 problems reported per 100 vehicles in the survey. Skoda was next (89 problems), followed by Suzuki (92). Hyundai came fifth with 97 problems and Toyota was sixth with 105 problems.

The average car had 131 problems. Far below this figure was Fiat, with 165 issues per 100 cars. The reputation of German car makers took a hit, with Mercedes only scraping in at just above average - its cars suffered 129 problems per 100 vehicles. Even so, that's a considerably better result than its rivals, which were at the bottom. Audis had 187 problems per 100 cars and and BMW was last, by some distance, with 198.

GrumpyJo

I hear you on that one buddy [emoji6], she is a rather attractive woman too. I doubt it was difficult to refuse

GrumpyJo

There was an Alhambra in front of me on the way home from work. Not too shabby. It's similar to the ford Galaxy but significantly cheaper. My father-in-law traded in his S Max for an ex demo Galaxy. I don't like it though. Sure it's kitted out with all sorts of gizmos from speed plate recognition to self parking and a fully digital dash including Speedo but it's not to my taste