RENAULT

Is Renault reliable?

34 complaints across 33 production runs — 1.03 per run against 3.72 for the market. Below, every Renault model ranked by how often owners of the same build actually filed.

NHTSA owner complaints · 34 complaints · 1983–1987 · Updated Sep 1, 2026
Quick answer

Renault averages 1.03 complaints per production run against 3.72 across the market, and its cars reach the halfway point of their complaints at 0 years.

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How we measure it

Reliability scores usually arrive as a number out of five with no working shown. The Renault figure on this page comes out of 34 individual reports, and here is exactly how they were turned into a rate — because two steps in that arithmetic are arguable and you should be able to argue with them.

Rate, not total. Volume alone would decide the ranking, so we divide by the number of production runs — the distinct first-eleven-character VIN prefixes on record. For Renault that is 34 complaints spread over 33 runs1.03 per run against 3.72 for the market as a whole.

Age, not year. Incident date minus model year gives the age at failure, which is what the warranty question turns on. It is also why the Renault year rankings above rest on 2 model years and stop at 1986: anything newer has not had time to break, and would win any comparison on age alone.

What this is not. Filing with a federal regulator takes effort, so what you see are faults someone judged serious — not scratched paint, not running costs, not how nice the car is to live with. And an absence of complaints on a rare model means an absence of owners, not excellence.

Frequently asked questions

Is Renault reliable?

Renault averages 1.03 complaints per production run against 3.72 across the market, with the halfway point of complaints at 0 years.

Which Renault model is most reliable?

Not enough data to rank Renault models.

Which Renault should I avoid?

Not enough data.

Where do these numbers come from?

Complaints filed with NHTSA, the US federal safety regulator. Filing one is a deliberate act, so this measures faults people considered serious — not survey opinions.

Complaint records from NHTSA, grouped by VIN production run (characters 1–11). Rates, age-at-failure and warranty coverage computed by ForCar. Model years newer than 6 years are excluded from rankings — complaints accumulate for a decade. Last updated Sep 2026. — ForCar Reviewed by , founder of ForCar.