All Vauxhall Zafira reviews

"The Zafira 1.6-litre may not be thrilling but it is thrifty"

If you'd resigned yourself to a second rate mini-MPV from a budget manufacturer, this might come as good news. Prices for the latest Vauxhall Zafira range kick off at less than £13,000 and you're not about to get saddled with an engine that would struggle to punch its way out of a wet paper bag. In fact, the 1.6-litre petrol Zafira models are well worth further investigation. If you were about to settle for second best, put d...

"The Zafira looks set to dominate the sales charts again"

Some cars offer a lot of scope for improvement. Vauxhall's Zafira, however, was never one of them. It fulfilled its brief brilliantly in offering seven seat family transport that was safe, affordable, reliable and enjoyable. Vauxhall subsequently reaped the rewards, the Zafira being the biggest seller of all European mini-MPVs, eclipsing the Renault Scenic in a market the French company once called their own. Replacing the Zafira...

"With some serious turbocharged power, the Zafira 2.0T SRi is a people mover and a hot hatch rolled into one"

By and large, mini-MPVs don't offer too much to those who enjoy driving for the sake of it. They excel at the family duties but when the kids are dropped off at school, there are only a handful of models that will encourage you to take the long way home. Most don't sell very well. Vauxhall think they've found a formula that will not only put a glint in the eye of the family moto...

"The Zafira VXR offers potent performance and peerless practicality"

I have a suspicion that my father viewed children as unwelcome ballast, a view attributed in large part to his choice of car. Every family car up until my teens was a sports coupe of some sort that would entail being crushed into a claustrophobic vinyl hellhole. Try that stunt today and social services would come knocking, but fortunately only the most dysfunctional dad would put their kids through that sort of ordeal,...

"These diesel engines are reliable, economical and flexible"

There's an entirely understandable logic that dictates that if you're about to buy a practical car you should choose a practical engine. Vauxhall always made great play regarding the racy turbocharged versions of their Zafiras but when was the last time you saw one on the road? Of far greater significance are the more prosaic but relevant diesel engines fitted to the latest Zafira and Vauxhall can serve up a pair of aces.

"This ECOTEC engine is a wholly different beast to the old 1.8-litre lump"

The Vauxhall Zafira VXR is quite something. What wouldn't you do with 240bhp under your right boot? The body kit, the racy alloys, the sports suspension, the loft that needs insulating, the school uniforms for the kids, the credit card bill from the last trip to Europe: now we're getting to more pressing priorities. That's why as attractive as 'halo' models like the VXR are, cars like the 1.8-litre Zafira represe...

"The 2.2-litre 16v engine feels relaxed and unstressed even when the Zafira is loaded ?"

Vauxhall certainly changed the rules when they introduced the Zafira mini-MPV. Vehicles of this class weren't supposed to have seven seats and boast car-like handling, but the Zafira did. Just when it looked like the rest of the market might be catching up with the car's tricks, Vauxhall rewrote the rules by offering a bigger, better second generation version. Equipped with the 150PS 2.2-litre 16v D...