I would never have believed it until it happened to us!

On a Friday evening my heavily pregnant wife parked our new Vauxhall Zafira outside our house and unloaded our two children ready to wind down for the weekend.

Everything seemed normal for a Saturday morning, except for the cat, who we decided needed to visit the vets.  I got the cat 'boxed up' and proudly loaded it and my eldest toddler into our gleaming Vauxhall Zafira.  As I started to pull away, there was the most amazing metallic, scraping noise. I immediately stopped, got out and looked underneath the car.

To my absolute amazement, the spare wheel cage was resting against the road and the spare wheel was missing.  On closer examination, I realised the clasp that secures (not sure if that's the right word to use here) the cage to the underside of the Zafira had been forced and bent allowing an unscrupulous person to steal the spare wheel.  I unloaded again and temporarily re-secured the cage to allow me to continue on my journey and alleviate my cats discomfort.

Following the theft of the spare wheel from my Vauxhall Zafira I visited my local dealer to explain my predicament.  He listened carefully whilst nodding intently before explaining that that he probably sells at least 3 new spare wheel rims for the Vauxhall Zafira a week. This was an issue that the dealership were aware of and after a quick search on the internet I discovered a community of disgruntled Zafira owners who had succumbed to the same fate.

Realising I was not alone, I contacted Vauxhall's head office to raise the issue with them.  I spoke with an evasive employee who claimed to be a departmental manager and when pushed claimed that his boss (who was also the manager) would only say the same thing as him and he would have to call me back when he was free.  His response was that the Zafira did NOT suffer from a design fault and that the car had passed all the necessary Euopean regulations.  How do you explain the high volume of spare wheel thefts, I asked?  You are responsible for the security of your vehicle at all times I was told and because the Zafira had passed the required regulations, I would have to talk to my insurance company to seek compensation. The likely hood is that your insurance excess would exceed the average cost of replacement for the Vauxhall Zafira spare wheel rim and tyre - about £100, which makes it a pointless exercise.

If the vehicle has passed all the necessary European regulations, I asked, please can I see these to satisfy myself?  Absolutely not was his response, they are secret and under no circumstance can you see them.  This really peed me off.  If that's their only line of defence in between making Vauxhall a great deal of additional money at Zafira owners expense, I should be able to see what it is they claim makes them blame free and totally unprepaired to extend their customer service to compensate and rectify the error.  If this were an isolated case then I suspect they may be willing to help but the shear scale of it means they would have to admit that there is a problem and do you think that would help to increase sales of the Zafira?

So who ends up paying out...you do.  And who profits...the thief and Vauxhall.

Thank you Vauxhall.

The Zafira is a good all round family car

Based on the Vauxhall Astra chassis, there are quite a few similarities between the two cars, such as the general driving ride and the quality of the car as a whole.

There have been a few problems that general users have seen with the cars, such as:

• The engine cutting out when idle.
• The In car radio not functioning correctly.
• A squeaking noise from the brakes after only 10,000 miles or so use.
• Spare wheel thefts.
• A necessity to keep refilling the oil on diesel models (1 litre every thousand miles or so).
• Small storage space.
• Strange engine noises which can not be located or fixed.

Saying this, however. The car is very practical and does have some very good points. The innovative ?Flex 7? seating system makes it very easy to switch the car from 5 to 7 seats without too much hassle.

Other nice features include easy access to the car thanks to the wide opening doors, ideal for families with small children, and an anti-stall device. Designed to stop the car from stalling a low revs.

The car is generally very good and although a minority of owners have had some problems, it represents extremley good value for money and provides a great means of getting the whole family from one place to another.