Picasso Or Zafira

as jeremy clarkson once said, people carriers are for men who have had their children, and are now just waiting to die. imo the piccaso is hideous, and I just wouldnt ever buy a citroen as they are crap.
get a mondeo estate, or maybe even a similar sized skoda (whatever that may be im not up on skodas) as both are brillian value for money.
 
Problem with that is that its hard getting in or baby in the middle seat with low headroom and the wife has back problems and has trouble getting 2 into the back of a vectra


Fair enough :) Only suggesting it in case it wasn't something you had thought about.

Judging by how large the ST220 estate I looked at was I just assumed it would be ok but if you can't actually get the children in the back then theres no point.
 
I'm thinking of phoning Childline and putting in a retrospective claim. We only had a mk2 Escort when were were kids so I must be scarred somehow. :(


oh stop it

we get the point, you can "make do" without an MPV. but theres no need to sensationalize like that

lots of people on this forum use there car as a means of commuting from a to b. A Peugeot 106 would be fine this. You could "make do" with a 06. but many users on here have BMWs etc.. and obviously dont want to "make do" so why should we ?

as jeremy clarkson once said, people carriers are for men who have had their children, and are now just waiting to die. imo the piccaso is hideous, and I just wouldnt ever buy a citroen as they are crap.
get a mondeo estate, or maybe even a similar sized skoda (whatever that may be im not up on skodas) as both are brillian value for money.

why do it get the feeling that all the MPV bashers in here are just midlessly quoting clarkson with little to no knowledge about what MPVs are like to drive, or what its like to have kids and to have to take pushchairs everywhere.

people say "get a mondeo estate" when tbh, ive driven one and cant see how its handling at normal speeds is any better than mine. Granted if you throw a mondeo into a 90 degree corner at 40, its going to roll less

but you dont go throwing you car into 90 degree corners at 40 if you've got your family on board.
 
I'm thinking of phoning Childline and putting in a retrospective claim. We only had a mk2 Escort when were were kids so I must be scarred somehow. :(

It would actually be illegal now to have one of those without seatbelts in the back, let alone with no child seats. Hence, the requirements of cars are different rather than doing it for psuedo safety.
 
Someone without kids, doesnt have any contact with car seats, DOESNT have a clue what we are talking about.

Does a Nephew count? Sister's Fiancé lost his licence by forgetting his insurance, so I've been a Taxi service a lot lately.


So far I must say: "BACK DOORS!"

Oh, and I imagine ISOFIX would be a plus, fitting car seats that use seatbelts is time consuming, especially without those back doors.
 
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May I suggest the Mitsi Spacewagon as far superior to the heap that is the Picasso.

If it were me and I had sprogs I'd want the best damn handling people carrier I could buy - that way it's more difficult to crash and more forgiving meaning less chance of death. A spotty 15 year-old fiddling with his first g/f's bra strap has better handling characteristics than the Picasso.
 
Does a Nephew count? Sister's Fiancé lost his licence by forgetting his insurance, so I've been a Taxi service a lot lately.


So far I must say: "BACK DOORS!"

Oh, and I imagine ISOFIX would be a plus, fitting car seats that use seatbelts is time consuming, especially without those back doors.

See fitting the seats isnt an issue as they will be in there 24/7 as they are in the seats that you buckle them into

also isofix stuff is soo expensive and the middle seats never have that connection (from what ive seen)

May I suggest the Mitsi Spacewagon as far superior to the heap that is the Picasso..

I'll have a look tomorrow for that then
 
The Fiat multipla :confused::D

Wasn’t that voted the best MPV a while back? Sure does look butt ugly though :eek:


multiplakb1.jpg
 
[TW]Fox;10247740 said:
Do you never drive your van on your own then? Or did your interest in motoring get killed completely when the sprogs arrived?

not apart from when i drive to work

and when im driving to work i spend all of my time stuck in the leeds rush hour

barely get out of 3rd gear. penalty for working in leeds, still its only 20 minute commute though, so not too bad. But i leave 2~3 miles outside leeds, so im trying to get into leeds for 9, the same as thosands of others so its a bit of nightmare.

thing is fox, you dont have a wife and kids so you dont know what its like. Its get up, take little un to school, go to work, come home, eat, spend about half an hour with him, before its time for bath and bed. Its not really fair on the poor thing that i hardly see him or the other half during the week. So on weekends we like to spend it together as much as possible. And once the little'un is in bed, im in for the night because hes only 4 we cant leave him on his own. When i had the polo, we'd go out together and just drive round and stuff, but not anymore. You dont know how much settling down changes you.

Im only 25, and have a 4 year old and a wife, and ive had to grow up pretty fast. But i wouldnt have it any other way...

This thread is the greatest advert for contraception Ive ever seen.

yeah because we all want to run away from growing up dont we..

:rolleyes:
 
Right spacewagons not in as the clostest one in budget is 45 miles away a bit too far at the moment and the mits. dealer (20 miles away) hasnt got one in

Fiats just down the road so first thing try a multipla also dont know if its any good but 4k gets an 03 plate!
 
I am not a huge fan of the older MPV's..

But the Zafira's Flex 7 is a pretty good setup, the car itself is pretty reliable and it handles 'ok'.. my brother had the GSi for a while, and although not the most communicative chassis, it hustled along well for a bus..

The Picasso is quite poorly built inside, but it does the job, it's suspension is way too soft, and the engines are very underpowered, but I'm led to believe the are actually reliable for a french car!.

The Uglipla is not my cup of tea, it's way too wide for it's own good (nightmare parking, and it's weird having someone sat between you in the front row!), and it's pretty unreliable... we used to get them as hire cars and they where universally hated..

I know people don't get MPV's and I can see some of the points against have some validity, but the new gen of MPV's handle pretty well, go well enough and do allow some 'driving' pleasure for the petrol heads amongst us!..

In fact, to augment his M5, my brother has got a VXR Zafira for the family, now it's remapped he actually admits it's more 'fun' in the Zaf simply because it keeps up (or in some cases pulls away) with any hot hatch, and when it comes to the twisties it handles well enough for them not to catch him up! Well that and the fact he finds driving the M5 in the wet/on poor road surfaces hard work!..
 
My brother had a VXR Zafira for a while, was funny seeing the little rude boys in their 1.2 modded "hot hatches" getting ****** that a family car is over taking them.

I drive a Zafira for work, 56 plate life. Not a bad car by any means but the dash is far over run far too much with plastic. Space is certainly plentiful, I have to carry loads of stands and P.O.S out, including things called Hi-image 28's which are near 7ft tall.

You can't fit those in your estates, I tried to with hire cars (Focus C-Max and 307 SW) but can fit two into the Zaf.
 
The biggest problem with an MPV isn't their cornering abilities, its the fact that they look like a van with windows, and are no better at ANYTHING than a decent estate.

I agree with regards to small/mid-size MPVs, but no estate can compete with a proper full size 8-seat MPV for practicality and space. And I mean a real 8-seater, not some stupid fold down 'extra' seats. The estima has a plenty big boot even with it's 8 (Real) seats.
 
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dont know if its any good but 4k gets an 03 plate!

That's 1 year pre-facelift.

There is a 100 brake 1.6 Petrol, and several 1.9 diesels; 105 JTD and 110 JTD, and if it was being used in them back then, the 1.9JTD which is actually the multi-jet. Similar to what you get in the "Bugatti Veyron", just with half as many valves.
 
You've not really done a very good job of convincing us of the virtues of growing up there, MrLOL :p Girlfriend + hobbies sounds more tempting ;)

Back on the exciting world of the topic in hand, the Zafira is the right choice here. It's a big Astra mechanically speaking, so it shouldn't be a nightmare to run and Flex 7 removes the 'no boot until you remove the seats, then you are left with 2 seats and nowhere to put them' problems.
 
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