HATCH buyers – do not automatically buy that Hyundai i30/Toyota Corolla/Ford Focus/Mazda3/Subaru Impreza/VW Golf without scoping out the new Renault Megane hatch first.
Priced from an astonishingly low $22,990, the Turkish-built French five-door blends reliable Nissan engineering and fresh European design in an inexpensive and feature-packed small car package.
Blemishes are few – a rowdy ride being the most disappointing – but its virtues are many, meaning that the latest Megane deserves due consideration. In no way is it an overall class leader, but you could do worse.

X84 Megane
Released: December 2003
Ended: March 2009
Family Tree: MeganeRENAULT’S first C-segment hatch in Oz since the demise of the bland R19 in the mid-‘90s was as perhaps the boldest car of its type on sale, with striking styling and class-leading safety – especially when stability control joined the facelifted Series II from June 2006.
Three shapes were offered – a five-door hatch, three-door hatch, and four-door sedan, with the latter sourced from Turkey rather than France.
The base Authentique five-door hatch featured an 83kW/152Nm 1.6-litre four-cylinder petrol tied to a five-speed manual or (until the Series II) a four-speed automatic more popular was the 98kW/191Nm 2.0-litre petrol in six-speed manual or four-speed auto modes.
That unit also powered the Dynamique LX and Privilege versions.
But sales were slow right throughout the range, with Renault discontinuing the three-door (rorty Renaultsport excepted) from the middle of 2006. The RS as well as the CC coupe cabriolet versions of the Megane are considered to be very different cars to the mainstream hatch and sedan featured here.
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