Renault Laguna

Road test

Just because 99.9999 per CENT of all Lagunas will be sold with a diesel doesn't mean you can ignore the petrol versions. Unfortunately, it appears Renault's R&D department have largely done that. The French manufacturer's diesel engines are superb these days, but this 2.0-litre petrol really isn't.

Sure, it's quiet at idle, but then what petrol engine you've driven isn't? Push on and things get quite crude, especially when you really rev it. There's a lack of refinement here that simply doesn't sit well with the improved quality of the rest of the car.

None of this is helped by the fact that our car came as a six-speed automatic. I've driven a diesel manual Laguna, and while the shift was no Honda-esque slick joy, it was at least pretty functional. The auto isn't. I've been caught out a number of times entering roundabouts on a trailing throttle - look right, see a gap, get on the accelerator and nothing. It's too slow to react and leaves you stranded.

It also feels like it's about to stall every time you brake to a halt, because the revs die to a perilous level. All of which is great news for the national IQ, because it means that the population is actually brilliantly intelligent when it comes to not buying petrol Lagunas.

Piers Ward