new Renault Fluence 1.5 diesel

darby1

Hi guys,

thanks for all the advice on the cars. I went for the 06 golf in the end. Thanks for all your help and apologies for all my similar threads but I just couldnt decide between all the cars as they all seemed good! Anyhow fingers crossed the golf will work out well!

A friend of mine is looking into buying a renault fluence 1.5 diesel. not sure how much but he will be getting the scrappage deal. He asked me to post to get your opinions on it as he heard renault doesnt have a good name but said is getting a good deal on the fluence so is tempted by it.

In terms of safety/crash resistance would they be as strong as the golf? They are offering him a 5 year warranty but he is afraid it will be worthless after that i.e that it wont be able to sell it on?


many thanks

frankie2shoes

i've just put down a deposit on a fluence dynamique last week. with the scrappage on my 98 bmw520 with a failed nct i'm getting 5700 off the asking price!
so its working out a hellova lot cheaper than any other similar size/spec'ed car i can find.
if he's getting a similar deal then the residual value in 5 years should be negated by the low price paid at the start.
the vehicle's got a 5 star ncap rating so its one of the safest on the road.
the 5 year warranty also means he's got no unexpected costs over the next five years which, personally, is a great comfort.
the resale may not be great, but a car is not an investment- you'll never make money on a car imo (except my 98bmw which i paid 2k for and scrapped for 5700!!):D:D:D

Leonard Hofstadter

darby1 wrote: »

but he is afraid it will be worthless after that i.e that it wont be able to sell it on?

He is dead right to have that fear.

Any manufacturer that tried the discounting approach Renault are presently trying got severely punished in the longer term.

Some people will be interested long enough in cars and the Irish car trade long enough to remember when Fiat had open book pricing and when you could buy Puntos for half nothing in the 90s.

They sold cars by the bucketload, but look at where they are now in the Irish car market! Virtually unheard of these days!

Of course, you might say that because it's a Fiat it's not going to be reliable and that's why they lost market share but people always thought Fiats were not reliable.

What happened was that Fiat were giving them away and when people went back after two or three years people were getting very little for them in trade in value. So people either stuck with them and drove them into the ground or changed anyway and decided they were never buying a Fiat again.

Citroen did the same thing in the last decade and for a while it worked wonders but now they have about 1 per cent of the market. Citroens were never really unreliable, so the 'reliability' excuse does not count here! Recently Gallic distributors handed back the franchise to Citroen in France because the numbers weren't adding up for them.

Irish people get very insulted when they are told their car is worth less than they think it is.

People are buying these Renaults thinking they are getting a great bargain, and I must say the deals do look very good, but really the cars will be worth far less than their competitors in the long run.

People assume that because their Fluence or Megane or whatever officially costs say €21k that it will be worth say €10k after three years, which is what happens if you buy say a Focus or Corolla etc, so you are getting a car that 'costs' €21k at a 'bargain' of €15/16k and that they've been wise and "saved" a massive five or six grand.

What actually happens though is that because everyone else thinks the same thing, and tells their friends etc what a great deal they've got is that when you go to trade it in, depreciation is not worked out on the actual list price but on the 'scrappage' prices - because that's what people really pay for the car. So instead of a Fluence or Megane being worth the same as its competitors, it is actually worth €5/6k.

So it loses the same amount of money in absolute terms as anything else out there, but losing 10k on a 15k car is proportionately much bigger than losing 10k on a 21k car if you see what I mean.

To cut a long story short, what you save today on a Renault you'll pay for when you want to change in three or four years' time.

The other thing is that even at the best of times, Renaults always lost a lot of money and in the eyes of the public they are not seen to be good cars. People won't want them secondhand, no matter how reliable the newer generation ones are.

Irish buyers are extremely conservative and rarely change their minds - typical for a country that sees cars as a necessary evil and always buys the least powerful lowest possible spec version of any car. Only in Ireland is the least powerful engine and poverty spec seen as an advantage when it comes to resale time!

Irish people still think VWs and Toyotas are great cars despite the fact that Toyotas are no more reliable than anything else and VWs are substantially less reliable than most other cars. VW haven't made reliable cars for over 15 years and yet they are very easy cars to sell on secondhand.

I think that if your friend is definitely definitely keeping a Fluence for seven or more years then there is no reason not to choose one if he likes it the most out of the Focus, Astra, Golf. Although a Focus/Astra/Golf etc will be worth more, the five or six grand gap won't be there at that stage - maybe more like one or two grand of a difference, so there is a net saving of three or four grand there. If he is someone who trades in cars often enough then I suspect at best he'll be no better off in the long run and if for some reason he didn't like the Fluence after owning it for a while, he'll have to pay big money to move from a Renault to something else.

BrianD3

captainspeed wrote:

People assume that because their Fluence or Megane or whatever officially costs say €21k that it will be worth say €10k after three years, which is what happens if you buy say a Focus or Corolla etc, so you are getting a car that 'costs' €21k at a 'bargain' of €15/16k and that they've been wise and "saved" a massive five or six grand.

What actually happens though is that because everyone else thinks the same thing, and tells their friends etc what a great deal they've got is that when you go to trade it in, depreciation is not worked out on the actual list price but on the 'scrappage' prices - because that's what people really pay for the car. So instead of a Fluence or Megane being worth the same as its competitors, it is actually worth €5/6k.

It's wrong to imply that a 5k difference in new car prices results in a 5k difference in the car's value 2 or 3 year down the line. The reality is that if someone pays 20k for a Focus now and 15k for a Fluence, in 3 years time the Fluence will indeed be worth less than the Focus. But not even close to 5k less.

When are people going to get into their skulls that the biggest factor in how much you lose in depreciation is how much you paid for a car. Cheap car = less depreciation. Exceptions: classic and rare cars.

Also things can change so quickly in the motor industry and the world economy now that if I was concerned about depreciation on a new car, I'd prefer to have 15k tied up in a current model than 20k tied up in another similar car. In 3 years time:
-Who knows what price fuel will be at
-Who knows what motor tax and VRT system will be in place here
-Who knows what the situation with electric cars and range extender plug ins will be
-Who knows what new technology and CO2 reducing measures the manufacturers will have implemented .

Plenty of people thought they were being cute hoors by buying a 55k 520d ("in silver because it holds its value better") in 2007. I had people tell me that it was a "better investment" to spend 55k on a 520d than 30k on a Mondeo. LOL. They had changed their tune by July 08.

Back to the Fluence depreciation, I hope R.O.R doesn't mind me quoting him but you might want to read this

R.O.R wrote:

I work in leasing, and whenever the Megane, Grand Megane or Fluence are compared against the competition, the Renaults come out with the cheapest monthly rate. That takes in to account:

Cost Price
Depreciation
Tyres
Tax
Servicing & Maintenance

Even though the resale value of the car is going to be lower than the competition (Astra, Focus, Golf), the saving in new purchase price is higher than the forecasted difference between resale values, therefore - less depreciation over the term of ownership. Same over 2,3,4 or 5 years and whatever mileage you look at.

colm_mcm

I think the fluence will be a bit behind golfs etc, but if you have 16k to spend do you buy an 09 golf tdi with dealer warranty, a new polo diesel, or a renault with 5 year warranty?

Banking on residuals is silly.

galwaytt

darby1 wrote: »

In terms of safety/crash resistance would they be as strong as the golf? They are offering him a 5 year warranty but he is afraid it will be worthless after that i.e that it wont be able to sell it on?


many thanks

In terms of safety, French cars are usually very good in the ENCAP results, so I'd have no qualm's there.

captainspeed wrote: »

He is dead right to have that fear.

Any manufacturer that tried the discounting approach Renault are presently trying got severely punished in the longer term.

Of course, you might say that because it's a Fiat it's not going to be reliable and that's why they lost market share but people always thought Fiats were not reliable.


Irish people get very insulted when they are told their car is worth less than they think it is.

People are buying these Renaults thinking they are getting a great bargain, and I must say the deals do look very good, but really the cars will be worth far less than their competitors in the long run.

People assume that because their Fluence or Megane or whatever officially costs say €21k that it will be worth say €10k after three years, which is what happens if you buy say a Focus or Corolla etc, so you are getting a car that 'costs' €21k at a 'bargain' of €15/16k and that they've been wise and "saved" a massive five or six grand.

What actually happens though is that because everyone else thinks the same thing, and tells their friends etc what a great deal they've got is that when you go to trade it in, depreciation is not worked out on the actual list price but on the 'scrappage' prices - because that's what people really pay for the car. So instead of a Fluence or Megane being worth the same as its competitors, it is actually worth €5/6k.

So it loses the same amount of money in absolute terms as anything else out there, but losing 10k on a 15k car is proportionately much bigger than losing 10k on a 21k car if you see what I mean.

To cut a long story short, what you save today on a Renault you'll pay for when you want to change in three or four years' time.

The other thing is that even at the best of times, Renaults always lost a lot of money and in the eyes of the public they are not seen to be good cars. People won't want them secondhand, no matter how reliable the newer generation ones are.

Irish buyers are extremely conservative and rarely change their minds - typical for a country that sees cars as a necessary evil and always buys the least powerful lowest possible spec version of any car. Only in Ireland is the least powerful engine and poverty spec seen as an advantage when it comes to resale time!

Irish people still think VWs and Toyotas are great cars despite the fact that Toyotas are no more reliable than anything else and VWs are substantially less reliable than most other cars. VW haven't made reliable cars for over 15 years and yet they are very easy cars to sell on secondhand.

I think that if your friend is definitely definitely keeping a Fluence for seven or more years then there is no reason not to choose one if he likes it the most out of the Focus, Astra, Golf. Although a Focus/Astra/Golf etc will be worth more, the five or six grand gap won't be there at that stage - maybe more like one or two grand of a difference, so there is a net saving of three or four grand there. If he is someone who trades in cars often enough then I suspect at best he'll be no better off in the long run and if for some reason he didn't like the Fluence after owning it for a while, he'll have to pay big money to move from a Renault to something else.

There's so much in there, I don't know where to start. Price of the car is, frankly, irrelevent. It's cost-to-change that matters. If you buy cheap, you sell cheap. With a VW you do neither, and cost to change can be the same, or higher, down the road.

Fiat's unreliable. God, that ol' chestnut again - give it a rest. When your VW rolls to a halt (and it will), and the nice man from the AA comes out, take a peek at the badge on the front of the van.........................

If OP is going to keep the car, and it proves to be reliable (and there is no reason to believe it'll be as bad as a VW, say.....as you point out yourself...), then he may be happy to buy another Renault down the road..........so all the math's is for nought.

BrianD3 wrote: »

Also things can change so quickly in the motor industry and the world economy now that if I was concerned about depreciation on a new car, I'd prefer to have 15k tied up in a current model than 20k tied up in another similar car. In 3 years time:
-Who knows what price fuel will be at
-Who knows what motor tax and VRT system will be in place here
-Who knows what the situation with electric cars and range extender plug ins will be
-Who knows what new technology and CO2 reducing measures the manufacturers will have implemented ..

....so true, and all of which makes anyone working out what their will, or won't be worth, 4/5/6/7 years down the line a completely fruitless exercise. Buy for now, depreciate to near zero in your ownership, and then, anything over that, consider it 'brownie points' if/when the time comes to change.

Leonard Hofstadter

galwaytt wrote: »

Fiat's unreliable. God, that ol' chestnut again - give it a rest. When your VW rolls to a halt (and it will), and the nice man from the AA comes out, take a peek at the badge on the front of the van.........................

If you read my post correctly you would have seen that I never said I thought Fiats were unreliable - merely there is a perception that they are not well made cars.

Perception can allow car markers to get away with a hell of a lot - VW is the most obvious example of that.

Tragedy

captainspeed wrote: »

He is dead right to have that fear.

Any manufacturer that tried the discounting approach Renault are presently trying got severely punished in the longer term.

Kia and Hyundai appear to have done well by selling cars cheaper than rivals and offering better warranties.

Some people will be interested long enough in cars and the Irish car trade long enough to remember when Fiat had open book pricing and when you could buy Puntos for half nothing in the 90s.

Maybe because Puntos were terrible cars? Properly terrible.

They sold cars by the bucketload, but look at where they are now in the Irish car market! Virtually unheard of these days!

I'm seeing plenty of 500's around and not that small an amount of Bravo's and grande punto's. Considering how horrifically ugly they are, there's a decent amount of Multiplas on the road too.

What happened was that Fiat were giving them away and when people went back after two or three years people were getting very little for them in trade in value. So people either stuck with them and drove them into the ground or changed anyway and decided they were never buying a Fiat again.

Is this based on any kind of fact or is it purely assumption?

Citroen did the same thing in the last decade and for a while it worked wonders but now they have about 1 per cent of the market.

Alfa didn't do the same thing and only have a tiny percentage of the market. I don't recall them discounting.
Do you have any kind of a causal link between citroen's discounting and its market share?

Irish people get very insulted when they are told their car is worth less than they think it is.

Yes, and everyone is getting insulted when it comes time to change. Doesn't matter if it's a BMW, Toyota or whatever. Residuals on all cars fell horrifically in the last 3 years.

People are buying these Renaults thinking they are getting a great bargain, and I must say the deals do look very good, but really the cars will be worth far less than their competitors in the long run.

'far less'? Mondeos for example, always depreciated like a brick compared to Passat's and the like, and yet they were never 'far less'.

So it loses the same amount of money in absolute terms as anything else out there, but losing 10k on a 15k car is proportionately much bigger than losing 10k on a 21k car if you see what I mean.

I could have just thought you were misguided up until now, but that is ridiculously uninformed with no basis in reality, with no evidence to be found ANYWHERE. Did you even bother to have a cursory look at carzone?
Meganes were a good bit cheaper than the Focus in 2007(in the UK at least) and I know Renault were heavily discounting back then. Go on carzone, plug in 07 Meganes/Focii and see what price they are going for.

To cut a long story short, what you save today on a Renault you'll pay for when you want to change in three or four years' time.

No you won't. You'll pay a proportion but it will leave a lot of change from €5,000.

The other thing is that even at the best of times, Renaults always lost a lot of money and in the eyes of the public they are not seen to be good cars. People won't want them secondhand, no matter how reliable the newer generation ones are.

And yet second hand lagunas and meganes still sell day in day out.

Irish buyers are extremely conservative and rarely change their minds - typical for a country that sees cars as a necessary evil and always buys the least powerful lowest possible spec version of any car. Only in Ireland is the least powerful engine and poverty spec seen as an advantage when it comes to resale time!

I think that if your friend is definitely definitely keeping a Fluence for seven or more years then there is no reason not to choose one if he likes it the most out of the Focus, Astra, Golf. Although a Focus/Astra/Golf etc will be worth more, the five or six grand gap won't be there at that stage - maybe more like one or two grand of a difference, so there is a net saving of three or four grand there. If he is someone who trades in cars often enough then I suspect at best he'll be no better off in the long run and if for some reason he didn't like the Fluence after owning it for a while, he'll have to pay big money to move from a Renault to something else.

A 7 year old fairly basic astra/focus is worth 3grand. Do you think a 7 year old megane is worth 1grand? Do you think a fluence will be worth 1/3rd of a Focus in 7 years?

opinion guy

frankie2shoes wrote: »

i've just put down a deposit on a fluence dynamique last week. with the scrappage on my 98 bmw520 with a failed nct i'm getting 5700 off the asking price!
so its working out a hellova lot cheaper than any other similar size/spec'ed car i can find.
if he's getting a similar deal then the residual value in 5 years should be negated by the low price paid at the start.
the vehicle's got a 5 star ncap rating so its one of the safest on the road.
the 5 year warranty also means he's got no unexpected costs over the next five years which, personally, is a great comfort.
the resale may not be great, but a car is not an investment- you'll never make money on a car imo (except my 98bmw which i paid 2k for and scrapped for 5700!!)

How in God's name can Renault afford to give someone a scrappage of 5700 on a beat up BMW that was bought for 2000 ?:eek:

Doesn't this actually just mean that the Flounce is about 4000 cheaper than they are advertising it to be ?

Marketing witchery :mad:

colm_mcm

Yes, they are giving massive discounts even without trade ins.

Henry Ford III

They are buying market share. How much good it'll do them over time is highly debatable.

Black Bloc

captainspeed wrote: »

...
People are buying these Renaults thinking they are getting a great bargain, and I must say the deals do look very good, but really the cars will be worth far less than their competitors in the long run.

I drive a Renault Dacia Logan in Italy. The (Romanian) Dacia series is the result of Renault collaboration/ownership. It's a seven seater, 1.5 diesel, a/c, and cost 13K new in 2007. Very good value in Italy - but compared to Ireland, cars in general are 30% cheaper if not more. In the three years of warranty, replacements included the a/c unit, rear driver side bushing, ABS computer, front passenger wheel hub including brake assembly, driver side tracking rod and a mysterious part of the accelerator assembly, etc. I decided to trade it in last summer but its book trade-in value was only @5900 against a full 'list price' new vehicle (not a Renault Dacia). My experience hasn't been sufficiently positive enough to convince me to look at a Renault in any shape again.

colm_mcm

The Internet wrote: »

Dacia cars got for the first time in the top 3 of the most reliable cars in France according to an analysis of the UFC- Que-Chiosir quoted by Le Figaro.

On the first positions were the Japanese brand Toyota with a reliability index of 96.2% and Lexus wit a reliability index of 94.13%. Dacia got a reliability index of 92.61%.

Dacia was also placed first among the cars with the lowest costs of maintenance and repair, 130 euros per year, compared Mazda (229 euros per year) and Ford (230 euros per year).

.

slimjimmc

captainspeed wrote: »

He is dead right to have that fear.

Any manufacturer that tried the discounting approach Renault are presently trying got severely punished in the longer term.

Some people will be interested long enough in cars and the Irish car trade long enough to remember when Fiat had open book pricing and when you could buy Puntos for half nothing in the 90s.

They sold cars by the bucketload, but look at where they are now in the Irish car market! Virtually unheard of these days!

Of course, you might say that because it's a Fiat it's not going to be reliable and that's why they lost market share but people always thought Fiats were not reliable.

What happened was that Fiat were giving them away and when people went back after two or three years people were getting very little for them in trade in value. So people either stuck with them and drove them into the ground or changed anyway and decided they were never buying a Fiat again.

Citroen did the same thing in the last decade and for a while it worked wonders but now they have about 1 per cent of the market. Citroens were never really unreliable, so the 'reliability' excuse does not count here! Recently Gallic distributors handed back the franchise to Citroen in France because the numbers weren't adding up for them.

Irish people get very insulted when they are told their car is worth less than they think it is.

People are buying these Renaults thinking they are getting a great bargain, and I must say the deals do look very good, but really the cars will be worth far less than their competitors in the long run.

People assume that because their Fluence or Megane or whatever officially costs say €21k that it will be worth say €10k after three years, which is what happens if you buy say a Focus or Corolla etc, so you are getting a car that 'costs' €21k at a 'bargain' of €15/16k and that they've been wise and "saved" a massive five or six grand.

What actually happens though is that because everyone else thinks the same thing, and tells their friends etc what a great deal they've got is that when you go to trade it in, depreciation is not worked out on the actual list price but on the 'scrappage' prices - because that's what people really pay for the car. So instead of a Fluence or Megane being worth the same as its competitors, it is actually worth €5/6k.

So it loses the same amount of money in absolute terms as anything else out there, but losing 10k on a 15k car is proportionately much bigger than losing 10k on a 21k car if you see what I mean.

To cut a long story short, what you save today on a Renault you'll pay for when you want to change in three or four years' time.

The other thing is that even at the best of times, Renaults always lost a lot of money and in the eyes of the public they are not seen to be good cars. People won't want them secondhand, no matter how reliable the newer generation ones are.

Irish buyers are extremely conservative and rarely change their minds - typical for a country that sees cars as a necessary evil and always buys the least powerful lowest possible spec version of any car. Only in Ireland is the least powerful engine and poverty spec seen as an advantage when it comes to resale time!

Irish people still think VWs and Toyotas are great cars despite the fact that Toyotas are no more reliable than anything else and VWs are substantially less reliable than most other cars. VW haven't made reliable cars for over 15 years and yet they are very easy cars to sell on secondhand.

I think that if your friend is definitely definitely keeping a Fluence for seven or more years then there is no reason not to choose one if he likes it the most out of the Focus, Astra, Golf. Although a Focus/Astra/Golf etc will be worth more, the five or six grand gap won't be there at that stage - maybe more like one or two grand of a difference, so there is a net saving of three or four grand there. If he is someone who trades in cars often enough then I suspect at best he'll be no better off in the long run and if for some reason he didn't like the Fluence after owning it for a while, he'll have to pay big money to move from a Renault to something else.

Interesting you mention how heavy discounting can demolish a brands sales. Here's some interesting facts from the SIMI showing the drop in sales between 2007 and 2010.

It's interesting because it shows that the brands with the biggest % drop in sales are brands which don't do aggressive discounting. Citroen's drop is -49.7%, only a few points behind Ford (-46.99%) and Audi (-45.92%). Popular brands such as VW, Seat, BMW, Toyota, Honda, Volvo suffered much greater losses of up to 70%.

Citroen's market share grew from 1.15% to 1.22% in 2010 (probably due to losses by other brands), Toyota's fell from 15.23% to 12.59%.

Perhaps discounting doesn't hurt a brand as much after all.

frankie2shoes

they ARE discounting them massively to gain market share. it can be the only reason for such high discounts.
I find it funny that a lot of people make sweeping statements about car models with out even looking at them never mind driving them.
I've owned and/or driven most models of saloons over the last few years and was quite surprised by the quality and ride of this fluence.
its no bmw but its certainly as well if not better put together than the A4 or the passat which cost considerably more due to their badge.

Black Bloc

colm_mcm wrote: »

.

This may be the the case based on the sample chosen, but my experience on the Renault Dacia would cause me to run a couple of kilometre from them. The joke is that the Dacia is so-well regarded in Italy that you could have it in Naples and no one would rob it.