I also considered a Cougar before buying this one. It was a little bit too expensive though for me to buy. It should be a daily driver (100km a day) and the fuel-cost would be too much. Not that the Puma is cheap with an average of 1l:12km.. And I don't need the extra space anyway.
Jeez that is pretty quick. It's a problem (one of it's many), but someone at the Puma club found a way to fix it forever using the aforementioned Renault parts. Did you get it fixed under warranty?