Deciding that life was worth living I called up the Emergency assist and arranged for it to be lifted into the local dealers, their running some tests etc and upgrading software (firmware).
In the mean time I booked a hire car and I will always remember the hire companies words, "We've got a lovely Megane for you, a beautiful car, full of gadgets", at the time I almost quipped "is one of the gadgets and engine?" but thought it best to take it out and see what's what.
So I find myself in a Megane estate with (I believe) a 1.9 Diesel engine (Dc110), it looks bigger than the BMW, in many ways internal room is no better if worse.
Boot is a little bigger, not much, I had 4 adults in it Saturday and one 12 year old, the 3 passengers in the rear complained all the time of problems finding and plugging the seat belts in, rear room was no better than the BMW, the passengers felt there was more room in the BMW and despite the seats looking nice and thick they are not comfortable, quite hard, in the drivers position my arms are almost fully outstretched yet my feet are touching the pedals OK so I'm driving almost in a cartoon style hands straight out pose.
The first thing I noticed was the strange controls, I took it on the Motorway, the car has cruise control and speed limiter, now then to engage cruise control I ..... ??? hmmm, the cruise control switch is .. wait for it ... on your left side, under the central arm rest, sit yourself in a dining chair, put your hands in front of you to mimic the steering wheel, take your left hand, put it down and back touching just behind your left pocket, fumble around a bit and you've found the switch !
The picture doesn't do it justice, the switch is almost on a vertical panel so you literally fumble around at 70 mph on the Motorway feeling for the switch, one way enables Cruise control, the other the speed limiter.
I noticed the car enjoys telling you off, you enable cruise control, the steering wheel only has 4 buttons on it, faster/slower, resume and set, so no buttons for radio, phone etc. the wheel just has those, anyway you set the speed, you then get to a hill and the car picks up a bit of speed, the speedo (which is digital), then lights up 2 large Red lights, when you slow to the cruise speed two other Green lights come on - why 2 ? why not 1 or why not NONE ?
The speedo, erm, now then ...
You have a traditional Rev counter on the left, with a pretty unobtrusive Gear Up/Down indicator, no issues there, the speedo is digital and shines a bright white light in your face all the time, the white segments around it I have no idea what they are for, the top two left ones light green when cruise control is at the set speed, the top two right ones shine Red, I have no idea why anyone would make a speedo so over the top.
On the right is some information, mpg, average speed etc quite amusing to see a message that the vehicle has stopped even though I was doing 70 mph.
Pressing the right hand wiper stalk on the end cycles the options.
The indicators sound literally like a 70's pong game Blip, Blop, Blip, Blop.
The one issue is the lack of buttons, the lights are on the left stalk, you turn things but most are a flick rather than turn and click so to put front fog lights on you turn part of the light stalk one way, it springs back, you do it again to turn off, hmmm I suppose at a push I could live with it.
The lights can be set to Auto (annoying mode), on, something else and whatever, so I left them in Auto.
The radio is quite awkward, with the BMW you drive along, press the audio button and you see a list of radio stations nice and big, it's simple, no frequencies to fiddle with just a list.
With this the tuning button is tiny and I mean tiny, you turn it and there's a small name and frequency, as I was turning it the station I wanted kept moving as it's re-tuning to other stations - several times I missed my station and found something else.
There's a large Sat Nav screen so why have such small writing and fiddly use ?
Even Ford Escorts from 10 years ago would put stations onto push buttons around the edge of the display, quick and simple, this seems far too fiddly.
Search buttons are again tiny, almost child finger size, not much use at 70 mph on a Motorway, even worse when you're also looking for the cruise control switch.
In front of the cruise control switch is the Sat Nav controller, I can only deduce this was designed by a mad man, quite hilariously it has a joystick/selector device but it's so strange you press it and find the menu or option moves because the joystick moves with the tiny finger movement, I found several times it was much simpler to turn the Sat Nav and radio off and just not bother.
Compared to the I-drive in the BMW this is primative and far too complex, Renault seem to have a nice enough Sat Nav Display but have not gone the length to tidy things up, it would be a mere software update to sort the radio out, why have controls on the radio in tiny tiny buttons when you could use the joystick system ? Why have such a sensitive joystick ? when your driving along it's too easy to nudge it or move it.
With the BMW control its accurate and quick so there are ways to do this without hundreds of buttons.
Just reduce the joystick sensitivity or stiffen it up, remove most of the buttons from around it or add a Radio and Tel button and make navigation and selection on the joystick.
There are radio controls on the right side of the steering wheel but they are obscured totally by the wheel, I never used them as I can't find them easily, hopefully they are better than the ones on the radio itself.
You can see the wiper controls in this pic, I almost got out and walked tonight, it was raining (not too much ) but enough to need the wipers, it has rain sensitive wipers, many years ago I thought they were a great idea but I found they often shot into super high speed and you have to turn then off and on to stop them going nuts, this does exactly the same.
Drive along, no wipers, a bit of drizzle, fine, the wipers turn on and wipe, then they do what I've always seen, the sensor thinks it's raining heavily so the wipers shoot into first, and then second speed wiping back and forth like a Randy dog's arse.
There seemed to be a delay dial on the end but all the way home I found myself either turning the wipers off or trying to stop them going bonkers, one moment I would have nothing, next the wipers scraping the glass off my face.
The rear wiper has two speeds, on and off so I labelled them pointless and worthless, the rear gets wet quickly so you need to keep it on have to keep turning it on and off to stop it annoying you.
While your driving the last thing you need is to put mental thought into what wiper settings you need and which thing needs turning.
I have to say these are the most confusing wipers I've ever used, coupled with the same controls on the left for the lights and it's too complex, you just need press once, intermittent, a bit more 1st speed, press more, 2nd speed - done and dusted, not fiddle, nothing, fiddle too much, fiddle what the hell, fiddle "God Sake", fiddle and so on with the Randy dogs arse mode engaged, I had similar issues with the Vectra years ago, you get some drizzle or a splash of water, the auto wipe engages, the sensor picks up some droplets from the wipe itself and thinks the rain is heavier so it switches into the next speed and so on, Randy dog arse mode again.
Add the daft amount of buttons for Sat Nav, the radio buttons, there's buttons everywhere, you don't notice them when sitting in for the first time but soon realize they are everywhere and you're pressing most of them while your driving.
As an example, the radio says bluetooth so I look for the Tel button, it's tiny but I press it and nothing happens, on most cars they will pop up and say no phone configured or similar but this does nothing so you find the one marked Setup or whatever and then start fiddling, it's pointless.
Even on the Avensis with touch screen you just touch the phone and then it offers to set up etc so it was pretty much intuitive, the BMW is pure simplicity so the Renault lags far behind in plain simple ease of use.
Driving was so-so, its not a sprinter, 1st gear gives you 20 mph and not much more, your quickly into 2nd and 3rd, there is some low end torque you expect from diesel and the engine at idle and driving is quiet enough, give it some throttle and it's rattly at the top end.
On the Motorway there was no problem cruising, it hasn't got much punch in 6th gear so if you need to overtake you find the acceleration lacking.
One problem I found was the digital speedo was hard to use, you can't see how the cars accelerating or slowing down, it's just a number so you often found the speedo lighting up red on the top to say "Too fast", then you ease off a little and see you've dropped 10 or 20 mph, it would have been nice to have a digital version of a traditional speedo so you can see both or choose and then get used to it, I'm sure over time you would be OK but it was very tricky to get used to.
At night the speedo lights up your face like a torch, the Sat Nav dims into night mode automatically but not the speedo , what the hell ???
Most cars are easy to set up or automatic, the Avensis you can program day and night easily, I've always liked the Avensis display it's really easy to read and perfectly designed, the BMW turns a nice dark red when you put your main lights on and is nice and gentle on the eyes, this glares at you.
Taking a pic with no flash you see the difference, on a dark road with no lighting I would say this is terrible.
Another annoying quirk, driving along the Sat Nav start flashing a speed sign such as 30mph, it then flashes if you start to exceed the speed limit, that's fine but I then saw it saying the road I was on was 60mph, in fact the road had been signposted for several years with a 50mph limit so if you're not careful this could get you a ticket if you follow this and not keep your wits about you.
Although it's a good Idea the combination of the cruise control lighting two bright red lights and flashing them, the Sat Nav flashing warnings the car is being too over the top, you don't need all this.
If I set a speed limit in the BMW for example I get a simple bong and the message "Speed limit Exceeded", that's it, in this you get lights flashing, things bing and bong, it's not nice and quite distracting.
Again some software work would sort that out, after all why not make one light on the speedo come on perhaps Orange, then change to red or similar rather than a sudden dose of Red.
All in all I don't like it, I find the drive is dull and uninspiring, in fact I feel old driving it, hands straight out like I'm flying a kite, the seat not comfortable, wipers needing almost constant attention to try and get them working at a comfortable level, the radio using a tiny font on a large screen, trying to tune it and finding a different station, Sat Nav navigation difficult on the sensitive joysitck the list goes on.
Fuel economy ? It says the engine gives up to 74.3mpg, I got 47.4 on the Motorway at the same speeds the BMW returns 65mpg, on the country roads to work I got 47.1 the BMW returns just under 50mpg so not a great deal of difference there.
It's a shame really as the car has potential but I find the controls and buttons designed by someone with a control fetish, there are far too many, you need simple, intuitive controls and these are OTT and complicated.
Perhaps the best thing about this, the headlights, it's got nice bright lights, very nice but it's everything behind it that needs a bit of a think.
If I didn't want a BMW and was casting an eye over this I would get the Avensis without question, it's a far better drive and the "gadgets" promised here are far better in the Toyota and easier to use, even if I did get worse fuel economy.
If not it would have to be offered at a hell of a discount to encourage me to put up with the lifetime of button mashing I know I would have.
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