A criminal complaint against Renault for the unreliability of the 1.2 TCe engine

Posted On: June 2, 2023

Boiling Renault: the 1.2 TCe engine under fire from criticism and legal proceedings for cheating and endangering the lives of others.

Renault’s 1.2 TCe engine has a bad reputation. Manufactured in Spain and the United Kingdom, this four-cylinder turbo tends to consume too much oil (around 1 L per 1000 km according to testimonials) even leading to engine failure. It is found in various models of the diamond brand, but not only, as it has also equipped models of the Dacia, Nissan and Mercedes-Benz brands.

dozens of plaintiffs

More than 1,700 Renault group customers came together to seek compensation. Negotiations failed and several dozen of them decided to go one step further and file a criminal complaint with the Criminal Court of Nanterre.

“We were able to show that Renault knew about this engine defect since 2015 and that Renault continues to deny it”, says Maître Christophe Lèguevaques, lawyer for the plaintiffs. Therefore, this complaint will be archived by “Aggravated deception, deceptive business practices, fraud, destruction, degradation and dangerous damage to people”because the French group sold to consumers “vehicles with an engine that could break down at any time without warning them”continues the lawyer.

A security problem?

The drivers claim to have suffered danger to the lives of others, because, according to their lawyer, this engine knows “loss of power at 130 km/h on the highway”when suddenly, the engine breaks down and the speed drops “at 50 or 60 km/h”. That is “extremely distressing for the driver who does not understand what is happening to them trying to pull over to the side and avoid vehicles approaching from behind”.

“The plaintiffs are very angry, because they not only feared for their lives when it happened, but they were then mistreated by Renault and by the after-sales service”says I Christophe Lèguevaques.

For its part, if Renault acknowledges that its engine suffered excessive oil consumption, it considers that it does not pose a safety problem.. If so, the group would have already been ordered by regulatory authorities to conduct a recall campaign. He further claims that “93% of the client cases identified in this file have already been attended to” in the columns of Reuters.