2001 Vauxhall Zafira Club review from UK and Ireland

I have a 1.8 club Auto, petrol. (I also have to park the car facing down the ways on a hill, else it registers no fuel) It seems a lot on the site say the same but with diesel, just to let you know, it's with petrol too.

At first, the engine management light would only come on after a long journey, (I have to travel to Essex from Scotland about 3 times a year) this is usually when it would happen in the first 2 years after the 3 year warranty ran out! It would then have problems starting at all for the next couple of days, then the light would go off and all would seem fine until we came back home. Then it would happen again, usually when we got to about Glasgow, then I would be praying the rest of the way that we would make it...

Back to Vauxhall it would go... they could never find fault with it. It's been doing everyone's head in for the last 6 years. The last couple of months have been the worst, becoming dangerous... The car almost killed me twice the other week, having to reverse into a main road, I was easing out slowly until I could see all was clear, all of a sudden, revs shot up to about 4000 and shot me into the road whether I was ready or not, I felt more sorry for the truck driver that had to skid to a halt in order not to hit me. Very scary!!! Then on a dual carriageway, had plenty of room to pull out, but car just didn't seem to want to go; I'd have been better off getting out and pushing it! Again, trucks were very sympathetic. Hence I've been trying to avoid larger A roads.

Since about 2006 I've had major problems with the engine management light. Mine stays on permanently now. It's been in and out of Vauxhalls since then, on a very regular basis... they can't find anything wrong with it. They seem to clean out throttle housing, reset all the fault codes, light goes off, till a day or so later, then back on again.

They say I should start replacing parts, like throttle housing (costing around £200) to see if that rectifies the problem, but they doubt it will work, as when they clean out the original, it clogs back up very fast, they don't know what's causing it to clog, so putting a new one on, they suspect will soon clog again.

It has recently acquired an oil leak too from gearbox/drive shaft. No one seems to be able to solve that either, have replaced seal but has made leak worse. This whole car seems to be jinxed.

Reading some of your comments, my problems are soon to get worse? I thought they were bad enough as they were!

Car was great in first 3 years.

Very comfortable even on long journeys. Front and rear seats, never had any complaints.

Great boot space when not using 7 seats.

Used to be great on fuel consumption.