Renault Hatchback Range

This situation raises a few questions. The first of which is how a car with just 9000km showing needs new front tyres. I know the Megane is a powerful front-wheel-drive car and will, therefore, be potentially very hard on front tyres, but 9000km? Surely it must have been driven hard in its previous life to chew through a set of tyres in such a short distance. I’m smelling a car that has been used for track days and, therefore, driven hard.

The other thing is that a performance car like this will absolutely live or die on the quality of the tyres under it. Putting cheap tyres on it will seriously compromise its performance and even potentially its safety in an emergency.

But it’s not too late to make things right. Tell the dealer that you’re prepared to pay the difference between the cheap tyres and the Potenzas the car should have and see if they’ll play ball. I know it would have been nice if this had all been explained to you before you signed on the dotted line, but some dealers (like some business people in any industry) will do everything they can to save themselves a few bucks. In this case, though, the result is a potentially compromised car in your driveway.

If the dealer won’t play, and you still want to buy the car, take it straight to a tyre shop and have a performance tyre fitted. But don’t forget that some of the Chinese tyres on the market now are far from as bad as people think. While you’re at the tyre shop, ask for a professional opinion on the tyres the car was supplied with.

A: The whole dual-clutch transmission in the Clio RS is made by Getrag, so I’m not sure what the Renault dealer you contacted is talking about. Perhaps the actual clutch plates are made by one of Getrag’s suppliers, but fundamentally, this was a Getrag designed and built transmission. Renault Australia did, indeed, slice the warranty on its Sport models from five to three years effective May 1, 2018, and I agree that that would have sent alarm bells ringing for existing owners of these cars.

What really sends shivers up the spine is that the six-speed DCT in the Clio Sport is closely related to the unit Ford used in its Fiestas and Focusses. And that transmission, known as the Powershift, was a total abomination, leaving Ford customers high and dry with broken gearboxes and Ford Australia with millions in fines and being labelled by the ACCC as conducting itself in an `unconscionable’ manner after Ford tried to blame owners for the failures. Eventually, Ford Australia was forced to offer owners of these vehicles a very sweet trade-in deal on the new model Focus and Fiesta, effectively buying back the appalling DCT-equipped models.

One of the major causes of transmission failure was the dry-clutch engineering which saw the clutch-packs wear very prematurely. Renault Clio Sport transmission failures don’t seem as common as those in the similarly equipped Fords, but that’s possibly a simple matter of there being so few Clio Sports on the road here. Perhaps the Renault version of the transmission is built to a different level of quality and materials (the same transmission is built in factories in different parts of the world, so that’s possible) but we’d potentially be doing you a disservice by not highlighting the problems with this transmission. Some owners have reported trouble-free runs, but others have experienced gearbox faults and failures at low kilometres. It does seem a bit of a lucky-dip. For the record, Getrag’s wet-clutch seven-speed transmission was a markedly better unit, but that’s not what’s fitted to the car in question.

If you do go through with the purchase, demand a full service history to prove that all the maintenance and factory software upgrades have been applied to the car and then take it for a proper test drive that includes urban and highway driving. If the transmission displays any shuddering when taking off, any slipping between gears, takes a long time to select each gear or switches to limp-home mode, there’s good cause to suspect a worn or faulty transmission.

In terms of life expectancy and durability I would expect both to be about the same, but I would expect the Polo to have slightly better resale value than the Clio. Both are good cars, but I would choose the Renault because of its longer warranty.