Faults:

DPF and EGR valve cause the biggest headaches. Otherwise just the usual wear and tear expected of age and miles.

General Comments:

C4 Grand Picasso is a lovely big family car, spacious and nice to drive.

1.6 HDi diesel is economical and fast enough.

Interior space is outstanding.

Just a shame it falls short in reliability. It could be that I do not do enough long drives to keep the emissions system happy. Only buy diesel if you do higher mileage; diesel DPF and EGR valves get clogged with short drives.

Faults:

Rear light failed. I had to replace the entire assembly, the tail lights are built in LEDs.

Otherwise, nothing, only routine maintenance.

General Comments:

This is my wife's car. she wasn't sure about the weird automatic gearshift, essentially a computer operated manual, but quickly found it responded well to unhurried driving. It certainly isn't a sporty car, but can get a move on if required, with an agility that belies its looks on bendy roads. It's very much a home cruising along main roads, quiet and smooth at all times.

It has a reasonably roomy interior, 5 adults each have their own seat in the first two rows, with sufficient but not vast amounts of leg room in the back. It also has two extra seats in a third row, although only pre-teen kids would have enough space for a long trip.

It has cavernous amounts of luggage space, and each of the 3 rear seats can be folded individually to make room for more stuff. A shame the seats don't fold to make a flat floor though. There is plenty stowage space in the car for odds and ends too.

She very much likes the cruise control and speed limiter, it is only too easy to creep above the speed limit without realising you are doing so, and likes the armrests on the front seats.

She doesn't like the fussy heater and A/C controls out of reach to all but the driver, but that is the only niggle she has with the car.

It uses remarkably little fuel, better than her less powerful but smaller Peugeot 307 it replaced.

Faults:

After a year of relatively trouble free motoring (replaced one injector seal) and one week after telling my family the car was serving us well, I had an oil warning light come up on my drive home from work. The next day I started up the car and opened the bonnet; realising I needed a torch to look for any problems, I stopped the car and took the keys inside with me for the two minutes it took me to find one. On my return the car REFUSED to start. Looking like a fuel filter problem, I dutifully removed half the contents of the engine bay and replaced this to no avail. I had the car towed to a French car specialist garage who (£156 later) told me they could find no fault and the next thing would be a compression test which would be another £200. Sadly this starts to get too expensive to pursue, as a compression problem will likely be uneconomical to fix even if found. I ignored so many reviews saying this 1.6 HDI was unreliable and hard to work on. I have never had a car before break so suddenly and evade professional diagnostics to at least identify the problem.

General Comments:

Avoid unless you like the suspense of owning an unreliable car.

Faults:

This car has problematic since we bought it in 2013. Maybe we were unlucky in that, but it has been disappointing. Our previous car was so very reliable despite being a fair bit older by time we traded it in.

This car needed a new head gasket within 6 months of us purchasing it and an entirely new engine mid 2016. It had been serviced etc and our mileage is under 15,000 a year, so not excessive. It had been serviced regularly.

The interior is not wearing well. Front dashboard storage box has a broken clasp and remains open - the individual part cannot be fixed as it is a closed system. Passenger seat no longer moves backwards and forwards. One backseat will not go back down if moved to allow passengers into the 3rd row. License plate on the boot keeps loosening on one side. One of the boot seats doesn't click up into a seated position and needs to be tried a few times before it does. That doesn't feel safe for my 7 year old to sit on to be honest. Part of the boot door covering (inside) is starting to come off. With 4 children we expected wear and tear, but we didn't come close to this level in our previous car, so it's disappointing to see so many things not working in just 3 years.

General Comments:

We were so exited with the boot space, spacious feel and the full middle seat when we got this car. I'm sorry we didn't look into engines more as all that doesn't matter if the car breaks down on the motorway with all of us in it. Nightmare! Anyway, we live and learn - thankful nobody was hurt!