FORD GALAXY 1.8 TDCi Zetec 5dr (2006)

Ford Galaxy - Practical family car, but a few too many faults

Our Ford Galaxy was on its second owner by the time we got it, both people having had it for only a year each. That should have rung some alarm bells, but we sort of thought Ford were a generally reliable manufacturer. The first thing to go wrong was just general bits of trim falling off and coming loose here and there, then some door rattling started up, which got gradually louder (very distracting and irritating on motorway drives). After that we had some bigger problems, like the engine became really noisy for some reason, and the aircon broke. All this was thankfully covered by the 12 month warranty the dealer provided, but it doesn't exactly fill me with confidence for after that. Maybe I'll be the third owner of this Ford Galaxy to have it for only a year.

Having said that, hopefully these are just teething troubles. Apart from the bits of trim falling off, the other problems haven't come back. It is after all a very very practical family car for us all. It's so handy to be able to whip out the third row of seats if the kids are fighting, or if they want to bring friends somewhere. Those seats are quite easily arranged as well. They're also pretty big as these things go, I think I wouldn't be too uncomfortable back there, and I'm planning to use them for my parents when we have a family trip next month. They also fold down very cleverly indeed making a larger boot floor. The boot is actually still big enough for normal shopping or bags even with the three rows of seats, but it gets much bigger with those seats down. With all the back seats folded down we once got a table and six chairs in there. It took some arranging but the Ford Galaxy swallowed the lot very convincingly in the end.

The storage spaces overhead in the Ford Galaxy are great, and the pockets in the doors are also very big, which the kids always fill up with sweet wrappers and things. That's fine though as I just keep the doors locked when we arrive until they've cleaned them out, haha!

Up front it's nice and luxurious, I do feel a bit like the captain of the plane. One sort of half problem is that the sat nav display is a little low down, which can be awkward when you're driving.

Ultimately I couldn't recommend this particular Ford Galaxy because of the faults, but perhaps these have been overcome with the newer ones.