Passenger van recommendations please

[AveEldon]

Our XC90 is too small for our needs so I'm looking at passenger vans

Will a short wheel base one be no bigger than the Volvo inside?

If you have a minibus/van would you recommend it?

We only need 6 seats although 7 would be useful

The Vauxhall Vivaro & Renault trafic appear to be exactly the same Mercedes Vito?
Ford Transit?
VW Transporter Shuttle?

I've got a vauxhall vivaro but not as a minibus (three seats across the front then a 2 person seat in the back that turns into a bed). It's exactly the same as the Trafic (and Nissan Primastar), but different to a Vito.

Very pleased with it overall, it's very nice to drive, very spacious (I use it for work and for camping) and fuel economy pretty good so long as you go easy on the accelerator. I thought the price / quality tradeoff was the best of the vans I looked at (ie, I'd have liked a VW, but they cost a bloody fortune for the age/mileage I was looking at!)

BUT the one issue to know about is that there is a potential manufacturing fault which affects the fuel injectors on 2l vans of a certain age. Mine (2008, had done 85000 miles approx) did develop this fault and to be fair my injectors were replaced for free by Vauxhall so actually the result for me was very good given that they only last a certain no. of miles anyway. I think though that this was because I had a full service history - thankfully I bought the van ex-AA and hadn't had it a full year when the problem arose. There's an article here - it affects vans 2006 up to end 2009 I think.

Thank you, my OP lost formatting - I thought the Vivaro and the Trafic were the same
Mercedes Vito was supposed to be on the next line

How much is the road tax on your Vivaro?
Do you have the short or long wheel base?

It's £230 tax, I've got the short wheelbase version. I think the long is really quite long for parking etc. from talking to people.

The long is only a foot longer. I run a fleet of 13 of them not really had any issues. Have run them since 2003 currently have 61-16 regs with up to 150k miles on them.

The only thing I would say is that if you're looking at second hand mini-bus versions generally come with a lot of miles on the clock (unsurprisingly), you may find it works better to get a panel van & get windows/seats added - at the least worth costing up.

Thanks