Hi,
I own a 2003 Renault Clio Expression 1.2 and last week as I was driving home from work I shockingly found that I couldn't steer the car. I had just navigated a smallish bend and started to accelerate down a straight stretch of road. As I accelerated the steering wheel went totally light and remained like it - I thought I was on ice.
My car then started to veer to the right hand side, I attempted to correct this by turning the steering wheel left but this had no effect at all and the car then violently veered even harder to the right until it had spun around onto the oncoming lane, tripped over a grass verge and plunged sideways down a 4ft ditch. It then somehow managed to roll up from the 4ft ditch back onto the road. All of the left hand side of the car is totally smashed, lefthand rear window exploded, passenger sear airbag deployed. The car is now a writeoff.
I was driving about 40mph, there was NO ice on the road and there were no blow outs, outside air temp was about 5 degrees C at 5pm and there were no skid marks. I was not speeding and I did not loose grip on the corner.
I am very lucky that there wasn't any other cars around at the time, especially oncoming cars as the accident would have been much nastier. I did have to go to hospital as I suffered back pain and internal pain.
A few days after the crash I went to repair centre where the car is being held. Guess what??? The steering wheel does not control the wheels??? If the car was moving and you sat in it and turned the wheel you too would think you were on ICE.
So, does anyone know anything about this fault with CLIO ? Why would the steering fail, when I say I fail I mean the steering wheel does not move the wheels at all - not even a little bit, the steering wheel just FREE wheels and spins around.
This is a very serious fault, and could have resulted in serious injury.
Frederick.