Vauxhall Vivaro Life review

If you need the ultimate people mover and don’t want an SUV, you really should test drive the Vauxhall Vivaro Life MPV.

No really, you should. While the Vivaro Life's commercial vehicle origins are plain to see from its exterior, this eight-seater is more than just a Vauxhall van with up to nine seats and extra windows. 

Once you get behind the wheel, it might well win you over with its driving manners, which are much closer to those of a car than you’d think after glancing at its boxy body. You might also be attracted to its high driving position, which gives you a commanding view of the road.

As with many of the best MPVs out there, you can have the Vivaro Life in either Normal (medium) form or with a longer body – called, logically enough, Long. It's available with a choice of two diesel engines, but there's also an electric version. To find out all about that, check out our full separate Vauxhall Vivaro-e Life review.

Of course, there are alternatives, such as the Citroën SpaceTourer, Mercedes V-Class and Peugeot Traveller. If you want something easier to park, you might also consider the cheaper and less spacious Ford Galaxy or a seven-seat SUV such as the Peugeot 5008. 

So is the Vauxhall Vivaro Life the best option for you and your family? Read on over the next few pages of this review to find out. We'll give you a run down of how it rates for performance, handling, interior quality, running costs and more, and also recommend our favourite version. 

When you've decided which car is for you, we can help you find it for the lowest price if you search our free What Car? New Car Buying service. It's a good place to find the best Vauxhall Vivaro Life deals.

The Vauxhall Vivaro Life may look rather van-like but shares its platform with the Vauxhall Grandland X and other PSA Group cars so it’s far more enjoyable to drive than commercial vehicles tend to be.

The first thing that will catch your attention as soon as you set off, though, has nothing to do with its driving manners, yet is a big reason why you might choose an MPV over an SUV – the even higher view from the driving seat. You can see over most cars' roofs, giving you (and lorry drivers) the best view of the road ahead.

The impressive visibility extends to your view from the sides, thanks to big, square windows that keep blind-spots to a minimum. The flat sides of the Vivaro Life also make it easy to judge its extremities, so it’s much less stressful to thread it down a tight road than you might expect.

Once you start picking up speed, the Vivaro Life remains pleasingly quiet, especially considering its shape. The Ford Galaxy is quieter still but the margin is impressively narrow.

You’ll quickly remember you’re in something rather taller and bulkier than a typical MPV, though, when you first encounter a corner. The Vivaro Life leans strongly in bends, even at fairly gentle speeds. You’ll want to avoid vigorous cornering for the sake of passenger comfort.

Speaking of which, on craggy roads it tends to bounce and twitch a bit too much over to be considered truly comfy. However, none of the van-based alternatives (such as the closely related Citroën SpaceTourer and Peugeot Traveller) have flawless ride quality. If you want something with a calmer ride, you'll need the Galaxy.

As there’s little reward for driving the Vivaro Life quickly, you might think it’s better to stick with the entry-level 118bhp 1.5-litre diesel. However, its pedestrian 0-62mph time of 14.3sec means you’ll need to work it and its six-speed manual gearbox quite hard to get it up to speed.

If you’re regularly loaded up with passengers, the more powerful 178bhp 2.0-litre engine will be a much better option. It gets to 62mph four seconds faster and comes with a smooth eight-speed automatic as standard, making it easier to drive in traffic.

The electric-powered version is actually a little bit quicker than the 1.5 diesel (as well as offering zero-emissions motoring) – for details see our full Vauxhall Vivaro-e Life review.

If you’re in the market for something that can carry lots of passengers, you’ll be expecting a decent amount of interior space. We’re happy to report that you get plenty in the Vauxhall Vivaro Life.

The seats are more like living-room chairs if judged by the amount of padding they have. The driver gets a seat that’s just as comfy, but, if you like to rest your arm on the top of the door panel while driving, you’ll find the hard plastic trim quite uncomfortable.

Although you won't find any soft-touch plastic, the Vivaro Life's interior is a pleasing enough place in which to pass a journey. The places you’ll most likely touch, such as the steering wheel and gear-lever, have a quality feel.

All models get a 7in touchscreen infotainment system that's positioned fairly high up on the dashboard where it’s easy to reach. However, the screen isn’t all that large in the context of the car's huge interior, so some might find the icons a little too small.

Top-tier Elite trim includes built-in sat-nav, and it's easy enough to use thanks to logical menus and reasonable reaction times. If you don’t like the Vauxhall system, you can always hook up your phone via its standard Apple CarPlay and Android Auto connectivity. 

Music lovers might want to invest in the Elite trim because its 10-speaker sound system is more up to the task of being heard in a vehicle as big as this than the four-speaker alternative in entry-level Edition models.

Vauxhall gives you an impressive array of different ways you can rearrange the rear two rows in the Vivaro Life. All seats are on runners so you can fine-tune the position of each row.

As an option, you can have swivelling mid-row seats and a fairly large fold-out table, which, if you were good with your Transformers toys as a kid, you’ll be able to rearrange in a kind-of mini conference orientation with the middle row facing the rear row across the table in the middle.

This seating flexibility also helps you to cram in as much luggage and people as possible. You can also remove the seats to open up a truly huge luggage space that is roughly twice the size of what the most capacious SUVs can offer. It's also fairly square so you can stuff pretty much anything in there.

Don’t worry too much about opening the whole tailgate in a tight parking bay – the rear window on Elite models can be opened separately. 

There are also plenty of places to store bits and pieces, with cubbies dotted around the interior just where you’d expect them to be. A prime example is the small cubby just above the glovebox that's ideal for your front passenger's mobile phone.

Pricing for the entry-level Vauxhall Vivaro Life Edition undercuts the Citroën SpaceTourer and Peugeot Traveller considerably, although you'll have to put up with less standard equipment as a result. The cost evens out if you select the range-topping Elite model, and the Vivaro Life's worse depreciation compared with those rivals will add to your ownership costs.

In terms of fuel economy, Vauxhall quotes over 40mpg for both the 1.5 and 2.0-litre diesel engines. Company drivers are more likely to go for the all-electric Vauxhall Vivaro-e Life because both diesels sit in the top 37% bracket for benefit-in-kind (BIK) tax. 

If servicing costs concern you, the 2.0-litre diesel is a better option because its servicing intervals are 10,000 miles longer.

Entry-level Edition models are rather spartan, with 16in steel wheels and part vinyl and cloth seating, so we’d recommend the Elite trim, which includes heated and massaging front seats.

As a brand, Vauxhall ranked a disappointing joint 22nd out of 30 car makers in the 2021 What Car? Reliability Survey – putting it behind Citroën, and only just ahead of Ford. A three-year/60,000-mile warranty is good, but hardly class-leading.

Euro NCAP has yet to safety test the Vivaro Life, although the Traveller and SpaceTourer it's based on both received five-star ratings in 2015. The top-spec Elite trim gets a lot more safety kit than Edition, adding lane-departure warning and automatic emergency braking (AEB) and four more airbags (Edition gets six).

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