2007 Vauxhall Vectra Reviews

Exhaust gas recirculation valve fault, replaced after much argument under warranty, potential £600 bill with £90 for "diagnostics".

Handbrake had a habit of pulling right up and not engaging, but next time it would work fine. Two garages adjusted and found no fault. Was doing this until the day we parted company.

Dual mass flywheel was very noisy when we disposed of the car; needed doing at a cost of £1500+... We got shot at this point.

Hesitation on acceleration was probably the swirl valve or maybe the EGR on the way out again... both expensive to repair.

Nice car, but very expensive to fix, and the engine has loads of super expensive things to go wrong, and all ours did.

The flywheel thing made the car sound like a 1970s JCB, and nobody except main dealers wanted the job.

Car was very fast, but was so fragile that using the engine is not great, unless you like 1k+ bills.

Rear legroom is not great.

Windy windows in the back, manual air con, lack of storage in the front; all pretty poor on an 07 luxury car. Lots of cost cutting evident.

On the plus side, it looks great, goes like a train, and does 40+ MPG.

Cruise control applied itself.

Hand brake faulty.

It now needs new rear discs, which are badly scored after only 36000 miles. Wonder whether that has anything to do with the handbrake fault? Although I have not had it run away on me like many others (yet).

Car is very good. It's the dealers who sell them that are the problem; they just don't want to know, while it's under warranty. If Vauxhall got that right, there wouldn't be any problems.

The air conditioning has been repaired 3 times, and is currently not working again.

An engine sensor has been replaced, and the two front tyres have also been replaced.

I received this car as a company car two years ago when it had covered 18,000 miles. It has now covered 62,000 miles.

Firstly the good points. There's plenty of room in the cabin for 4 adults (5 if necessary), and the boot is a good size.

It is a fine motorway cruiser. I find it just as easy to drive round town as a smaller car.

The seats are firm, but are easy to adjust. I always find the seats comfortable even after a long journey.

The engine (150 bhp CDTi) has plenty of performance, and gives around 50 mpg.

The cruise control is really useful.

Now for the bad points.

The Vauxhall dealers have had 3 attempts to repair the air conditioning, and it still does not work. I think that there is a leak in the system, which they have not been able to trace.

The inbuilt sat nav is useless. It takes 3 minutes to start up when you switch it on, which means that you wait or you try and enter your destination as you drive along. It has a clumsy rotary dial to enter information. It only has a 2D display. The maps are out of date. It has tried to send me up no through roads; along narrow lanes when I was on a fast A road; and it chose an A road route in preference to the shorter motorway route. It does not accept full postcodes. I've bought a TomTom. It's a million times better.

Other niggles are that the interior is drab; the gearbox occasionally doesn't want to get into gear; I hate the self canceling indicators and I think that the radio sound quality is poor.