Disclaimer: not my car. :-)
Purchased a Renault Megane Scenic 1.6 just before Xmas at a cost of £2400 from a local garage. Looked ok and drove well to begin with. Had a few problems with it and the garage resolved them for us at the time.
About a month later the Renault started coughing and drove funny. Back it went to the garage as it was still under it's 3 month warranty. Garage phoned my wife to say it's fixed but it's going to cost you £20. She asked £20 for what?.....they said the part they fixed was not covered by the warranty. She argued this out as they never contacted her to say this and eventually they let it go.
Car seemed fine for about a week then it started blowing blue smoke out the back and driving funny again. It even started turning itself off without warning.
I contacted the garage and asked them to have a look again upon where now the owner of the garage would not respond to my calls. The garage is owned by father and Son. I spoke to the son who said they own 50% each of the garage and that the car we purchased was from his Dad and I would need to speak to him to resolve.....he then told me that his Dad will not return our calls as we never paid the above £20 !!!
Anyway....now this is the interesting bit:- I decided the best people to run a full diagnostic on the car would be the Renault Garage. I booked it in for 8am and said I would be there for 5pm to collect it for a cost of £75. Seemed fair to me.
Arrived at 5pm (bearing in mind they have had the car all day) to be told it's not ready, could I come back in 25 mins!
Came back in 25 mins and they gave me a report telling me the manifold was cracked and it was going to cost £400 to fix.
I needed a 2nd opinion so I took it to another garage (whom i trust). They had one quick look and found the manifold was not bolted on to the exhaust correctly at all, hence blue smoke and lack of perfomance and noise. They tightened the bolts and it sounded perfect once again.
Another week passed and the car would not start, thought it could be the battery, checked that and it seemed fine. Booked it into my trustworthy garage this time for yet again a "Full Diagnostic" They contacted me to state the cars Head Gasket was proper F@++d and if you know your cars you will know that to fix that means at least £1k
My problem is now this. The car is now out of warranty. It's impossible to tell when a head gasket has broke so I have no comback on the garage who sold me the car. The car is worthless to sell on. It's going to cost the best part of anywhere between £800 to £1200 to fix.
Any ideas, suggestions, comments as im now at my wits end