Zafira - Oh how I love you. Check out my hands. (Vauxhall Zafira Club 1.6i 16v 5-door MPV)

Member Name: hillcrestsan

Product:	Vauxhall Zafira Club 1.6i 16v 5-door MPV
Date:	13/04/08 (1133 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: 7 seats, decent drive. Ours is silver.

Disadvantages: Not a lot - a bit ugly.

Pleurisy now diminishing, what say I launch into a 5-year progress report on our much respected, if not exactly loved Zafira. According to Wiki, the Zafira was named after a Hungarian porn actress called Zafira. She recently underwent breast enlargement because one breast was larger than the other. Hey - same's true of my hands. We should meet.

Here's an early disclaimer:
I know bugger all about cars. I let mankind down. I am as worthless as a worm.
I can drive.
I know where the petrol goes.

So, purpose of disclaimer is to get people who watch Top Gear off my back from the off. There will be no talk of bhp, torque or carburettors. Hey -I spelt it right. No red line. Cool. This will be a simple explanation of experience/costs/likes and dislikes and practical stuff like wot I do know about. All technical stuff will be dispelled in the first section.

1.6i 16V
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What the f**K does that mean?

Looks
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That done, down to the nitty-gritty (which is apparently a very racist term, related to the slave trade but I can't remember from whence it came).

The Zafira was pretty much based on the old Astra with a slightly extended chassis. The Astra was not especially good-looking and hey - guess what? My wife dislikes it's looks totally. She likes minxy in a car and this ain't it. It isn't ugly - just bleugh. Very non-descript. The stubby bonnet sweeps up to a large windscreen and on to the long, essentially rectangular body. Very little in the way of curves here. The rear drops precipitously to the tail. Ours is silver. So it is also shiny.
Inside, the layout is much like the Astra. The dash (and I did have an Astra by the way, once, in a former marriage) is a large chunk of black plastic with black control knobs. The usual stuff is there - and that's it. No bells and whistles in our rather basic model. The car came with a CD player. So what I hear you say? Well bugger off, I'm struggling to impress here. The glove compartment is roomy enough for the first aid kit (we don't even remember is there) and snotty tissues that get thrown in from time to time. The electric window control sits on the door arm rest.
In the back, there is little to talk about other than the drink holders and side pockets.
All-in-all pretty unimpressive stuff. Nothing to make anyone whoop in delight. So then - the beauty of the car must lie elsewhere. And it does.

Everything collapses
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Which, for once, is good.
The car is a seven-seater MPV. Now this isn't something unique - just something I think the car does very, very well.
My sister has a Galaxy. Also a seven seater. Now, if on one very boring Sunday afternoon I were to challenge to an inter-family 'Who can convert their 5-seater to a 7-seater and then back again' race I would seriously whoop her ass. I have a competitive streak, OK?
As she was struggling to get her seats from where-ever she last buried them, clip them in, and then unclip them I would have finished, flown to Milan for a cappicino, and then got home. With a tan.
On the Zafira, everything sort of slides out of the way and/or into position. The rear seats are stored under the middle seats when they are not up. You just move the middle seats forward, Slide up the rear seats to a vertical position and er.... That's it.
I have heard a few people complain that the rear seats are not that comfortable but we just shove the kids on them and if they complain I ignore them. They never have anyway. The kids have ample leg room back there, leaving the kids in the middle with plenty to spare as well. I admit, adults might get a bit squished in the very back after a long journey but I doubt it would be any more than you would get in the back of a hatchback.

Off course, when the seats aren't up there is a huge storage space in the back - easily challenging an estate car. If you want, you can have just one rear seat up and leave the equivalent to a 'boot' next to it.

If you have anything long to get in, all the rear and middle seats will collapse to near flat. We've had doors in there, a wardrobe - all sorts and still shut the boot. To cut funeral costs, you can put a coffin in it.


Cost a lot?
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The care has, in 5 years (60,000 miles) been through 2 and half sets of tyres and 2 sets of brake pads and the end/middle exhaust section. The servicing has been done on time, so far for about £150 a pop. It's had, I think 4. All done at Vauxhall apart from the last one, where we went to the independent garage round the corner. Nothing major needs doing. Yet.
However - twice now, the engine warning light has popped up with the useful manual telling us to take it to a Vauxhall garage to attach to the computers. Both times the warning was an error. Both times it cost £50 to attach it to the computer to tell us it was an error. In a way, it is a testament to modern computer technology that everything works so well that the computers get bored and 'pretend' there is something wrong 'for a laugh'.

Fuel economy is diminishing rapidly with age. Where once it probably clawed 35mpg, 25mpg is now a more realistic proposal. Put it this way, every school holidays I go to Check Point Charlie in Newbury to pick up my 2 kids from the ex. Actually it's Sutton Scotney services but there is no adventure in the admission. This is a 430 mile round trip which costs £85 in the Zafira not including the M6 toll road (traditionally, you paid to use a toll road to avoid bandits, nowadays you use it to subject yourself to daylight robbery). It costs £40 in the 206 deisel. No contest.

The drive
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You would not think you were in a seven-seater that's for sure, The elevated driving position is actually quite cool and makes you feel big and safe. The car handles like a car. Like an Astra to be precise. It is perhaps a little bit skittish under acceleration in terms of steering but it does accelerate pretty well for a heavy tank of a car. Around town, it's nippy, which it really shouldn't be. On the motorway, 5th gear still has heavy revs I find which I don't like. It's quite noisy and feels like it must be drinking the fuel with a straw.

Having said that, we have done some pretty large runs in it (Scotlad) with everyone fairly comfortable - including the driver (me - hi!).

Do things fall off it?
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No but a few things have gone kaka on it but not the cars fault.Firstly, there is a detachable rear shelf/boot cover. This clips into a couple of holes on either side of the rear passenger compartment. These are the exact size of Oidz - you know - those magnetic anusol suppository shaped things for kids. When an 11 year sticks an Oidz in one hole and the 3 year-old copies and shoves one in the other hole you can no longer attach your rear shelf. Vauxhall obviously didn't do their research, or failed to take into account that children are sort of retarded.

As further proof, when a short 11 year-old opens the boot to get football boots out and then tries to shut the boot - he can't reach. Obviously the eleven-year old will jump up to grab the boot lip, allowing his weight to pull it down. If he grabs the middle.
If he jumps to grab the right edge instead, his weight will only be enough to bend the hydraulic door-arm, rendering it useless and spraying hydraulic fluid all over himself. From this point on, the one remaining hydraulic arm will be insufficient to hold the boot up by itself, requiring you to balance the boot on your head.

Now, I'm a tolerant man.....................

Other than the involvement of children, the build quality has been pretty good and nothing else has broken.

I'm bored
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Well, that's exhausted my scope of car interests. Let's face it - cars are pretty complicated and exhaustive things and I could go on forever - but there is only so much strength I can muster and soon I will begin to delve into things of which I know nothing.

In summary - it isn't pretty. It isn't all that economical to run, though servicing so far hasn't been very painful.

It is hugely practical. We genuinely need 7 seats on a regular basis and having the Zafira means not having to use 2 cars to go everywhere, which does balance the fuel consumption somewhat. It has been very reliable and little has gone wrong we could blame the manufacture for.
The £10,000 we paid 5 years ago with 3000 miles on the clock has been money well spent.

Actually - one thing I just remembered - all those moving parts and collapsing seats make it a bugger to clean - the bits of cake, finger and crisp packet manage to get into every nook and cranny - places most vacuums live in claustrophobic fear off.

Thanks for reading.

May also be found on other review sites where this review, due to the fact that there will have been dozens similar, will pay about half-a-penny per read. If I'm lucky!

Summary: Huge respect for the Zafira.

Processing/Quality:
Reliability:
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