I loved my Zafira, very honest car, but nice to see the XC90 compares very favourably against it for capacity. I found it very comfortable for a chap of my dimensions, it drove reasonably well was easy to work on and very practical. Mine was even quite reliable! It had a lot to recommend it...but id never go back now.
The Galaxy looks great on paper, but has a serious drawback. Unlike the XC and the Zaffy, you need to actually remove the seats to access the greater load area. I don't have anywhere to store them, and discovering you need to remove sests to fit your B&Q shopping inside is a bit of a ballache. In the 90 you pull a lever, over it goes, no problem. It has great capacity, using it has massive consequences and you cant just whio seats out at the shops or put them back halfway theough a journey. Its a van or a car, but not both at the same time.
Got some 2.4 metre lengths of wood, battens and oak planks, in the XC yesterday with room to spare. They do not fit in a Zaffy I know that first hand.
The other issue is that when humans are being transported the cabin in the Zaffy is relatively cramped, and aside from the extra headroom pretty much an Astra sized cabin. The Galaxy is better (know the Galaxy well, Mrs D had an Alhambra for a spell) and that is obviously much better than the Zaffy, but still not in the same league as the XC.
And the XC can have a human in all 7 seats and still has the boot capacity of a small hatch remaining. Not so the Zaffy. The Galaxy has some too, but its awkwardly proportioned and narrows at the top, so unless your luggage is wedge shaped its actually very diffult to use. Also the Volvo's split tailgate means stuff youve wedged in there in 7 seat mode doesnt fall out when you open the boot.
So while the Galaxy trumps if you are happy to take out - bloody heavy - sests and have somewhere to store them, its not stellar the rest of the time. Under one brand/model name or another weve been there with all 3 and the Volvo aces it, but if I were forced to choose I'd take the Zaffy over the Galaxy again any day of the week.
And the Volvo also brings built in child booster seats that deploy at the toack of a lever, rear seat tv screens, heated seats all round (ventilated and heated massage jobs in the front), more sensibke accessories and frivolous toys.
And the Galaxy lacks wading capacity, AWD, ground clearance... it no use to me when it rains heavily and one village road floods and the other becomes a ford.
Some cars do one thing better, some do another, but only our large SUVs do it all reasonably well. They're the mama bears porridge of motoring - just right.
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