Vauxhall Zafira 1.7 CDTi ecoFLEX Exclusiv

Wednesday 07 October 2009

Report by Graham Whyte

Unlike some of my fellow automotive writers who, when writing a road-test report, seem to draw inspiration from what other journos have written, I like to fly solo. Indeed, when I have booked a particular car for testing, I go out of my way to avoid reading anything about the car, to the extent that I don't even read the press briefing. That way I am free to form my own first impressions, without their being clouded by other writers' opinions or the marketing rhetoric that inevitably colours a press briefing.

But in keeping myself in the dark, so to speak, I sometimes make mistakes: initially, at least, although not too many, I hope, by the time I put finger to keyboard. So when I took the Zafria ecoFLEX for its first drive, I thought piece of cake: what is there to assimilate? The Zafira's been around for donkeys years, so there's little new to learn about this stalwart of the midi-MPV market.

The only really new thing about the Zafira on test was its low-emission engine, which, like others of its kind, produces punch and parsimony in equal measure. Typical 1.9 TDI-type engine, I thought. Except it wasn't, quite. This one didn't seem to use any fuel. After a couple of days mixed driving, the fuel gauge was still reading full, and I even resorted to tapping it, just in case.

Time to act professional, I thought; so I read the press briefing and came across this nugget: '...this Zafira now has a theoretical range of 680 miles'. And I worked out that with a 58-litre fuel tank, the range equated to an extra-urban consumption in excess of 60 miles-per-gallon. Even rounding down to a more realistic range of 600 miles, that still meant a round trip to Lands End from my home in Surrey on a single tankful. Not bad for a 1.9 diesel, even by today's standards.

It was at that point I turned over the page, and read the engine specification, looking for a clue as to why this 1.9-litre engine was so abstemious. Ah! Maybe it's because it's only a 1.7-litre engine, or 1686 cc, to be precise. Yet, had I not bothered to read the small print, I would have been confident of my assumption that under the bonnet lurked a 1.9 unit.

Even though the GM engine is a couple of slices short of a full banana, it behaves as if it were the complete thing. Although the 0-62 time of 12.6 seconds is unremarkable, the mid-range performance seems in no way inferior to that of a 1.9 car. A torque output of 260 Nm, peaking at 2300 rpm, is enough to deliver a level of flexibility that I associate with a 1.9 engine. Perhaps the only clue to the engine's slightly smaller stature is the higher-than-average peak-torque threshold, which is noticeable only as a slight reluctance to pull at the kind of ultra-low revs at which some diesel engines gather grunt.

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