SA Road Tests

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This is the home of automobile road tests in South Africa. We drive South African cars, SUVs and LCVs under South African conditions. It also just happens that most of the vehicles we drive are world cars as well, so what you read here probably applies to the models you can get at home.
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*Please remember too, that prices quoted were those ruling on the days I wrote the reports.


We drive Opel’s 2012 Meriva Cosmo yummy mummy bus

For people with busy lives

Published in The Witness Motoring on Wednesday September 12, 2012

This second generation Meriva compact MPV is built on GM and Fiat’s SCCS small car platform that it shares with the Opel Zafira. Very different from the original Corsa-based vehicle, it’s longer, wider and has much nicer suspension and interior appointments. The range of engines has been rationalised and improved as well. For geography and history fans, it is built at Zaragoza (Saragossa) in Spain’s Aragon region, birthplace of Catherine, first wife of Henry Vlll.

Having established a tenuous royal connection this is a good point at which to mention Meriva’s rearward-hinging back doors – like those on early Queen Mum Daimlers. There was nothing quite like those portals to guarantee elegant and demure entry and exit for royal personages. They still work well today, making it easier and less revealing to get in and out, but are more comfortable for older folk too. Grab handles on the frames and “puddle lights” (where is that Raleigh person?) at sill level make life easier for everyone. They also open really wide to make it easier for harassed mothers to load baby chairs into the back seat. ISOFix anchorages and all the safety and convenience features? Obviously!

For example, both entry-level Enjoy and upmarket Cosmo models have tinted windows, daytime running lights, remote central locking with autolock as you drive away, powered and heated outside mirrors, height-adjustable front seats, powered windows, electrically powered parking brake, filtered air conditioner, front fog lamps, an onboard computer, a four-speaker radio and CD unit with Bluetooth, USB and auxiliary, alloy wheels and cruise control. Safety equipment includes ABS brakes with EBD and EBA, ESP, six airbags, front and rear parking assistance and child-proof locks.

Cosmo trim, at R20 000 extra, adds various cosmetic items, a very versatile and removable central storage box with armrest, bigger wheels, a panoramic glass roof, automatic headlights, part-leather upholstery, climate control, rain sensing wipers and a seven-speaker sound system.

Moving babies isn’t all it does well. Back seat passenger volume is generous considering it’s a foot shorter than your average medium SUV, with plenty of space for knees and feet, although the resident tall passenger was a little doubtful about headroom. Its greatest party trick is in the flexibility of its seating and this is where Business Mum, once she has dropped the heirs off at day-care, has free reign.

The hatch door lifts from mid-thigh height to reveal a 400-litre luggage area that expands to 920 litres when the 40:20:40 seatbacks are folded down. Its floor is flat with four lashing rings and a cargo net is provided. Lifting the floor board reveals a compartment deep enough for a laptop, cash box, or similar small items. The spacesaver spare is below that.

Apart from being able to move backward and forward through a range of about 12 cm, each seat does a clever slide and fold action with a single pull on a looped strap. Even the centre section folds down on its own to reveal a load-through from the boot. Put simply, you can decide whether to convert your five-seater bus into a two, three or four-seat Kombi whenever the mood takes you. Quick tugs on secondary straps put everything back up again. For the chronically untidy, a total of 32 storage boxes, nooks and spaces are spread throughout the car.

You want a panel van for the day? Fold all parts of the back seat down, leaving the head restraints in place, unfold the boot carpet or reverse it to show its hard-wearing plastic side and cover the newly-revealed flat load floor. It takes a few moments to clip the supplied cargo net, borrowed from its commercial cousins, into fittings in the roof and secure the lower ends of its seatbelt-style straps to hooks on the floor. You don’t want your deliveries to whack against your head if you need to brake suddenly, do you?

The 1400cc turbocharged engine pulls strongly, the six-speed manual gearbox works smoothly and the car handles like a dream. It’s comfortable, parks easily and goes well – perfect for people with busy lives. You don’t even have to be a yummy mummy to own one.

The numbers
Price: R254 000
Engine: 1398 cc, DOHC, 16-valve VVT, turbocharged four-cylinder
Power: 103 kW between 4900 and 6000 rpm
Torque: 200 Nm between 1850 and 4900 rpm
Zero to 100 km/h: 10,3 seconds
Maximum speed: 196 km/h
Real life fuel consumption: About 9,0 l/100 km
Tank: 54 litres
Warranty: 5 years/120 000 km, with roadside assistance
Service plan: 5 years/90 000 km, at 15 000 km or 1-year intervals




This view is of the entry level Enjoy version that has different wheels and lacks a few features



What We Do

This is a one-man show, which means that road test cars entrusted to me are driven only by me. Some reviewers hand test cars over to their partners to use as day-to-day transport and barely experience them for themselves.

What this means to you is that every car reviewed is given my own personal evaluation and receives my own seat of the pants judgement - no second hand input here.
Every car goes through real world testing; on city streets littered with potholes, speed bumps and rumble strips, on freeways and if its profile demands, dirt roads as well.

My articles appear every Wednesday in the motoring pages of The Witness, South Africa's oldest continuously running newspaper, and occasionally on Saturdays in Weekend Witness as well. I drive eight to ten vehicles most months of the year (press cars are withdrawn over the festive season - wonder why?) so not everything gets published in the paper. Those that are, get a tagline but the rest is virgin, unpublished and unedited by the political-correctness police. Hope you like what you see, because there are no commercial interests at work here. As quite a few readers have found, I answer every serious enquiry from my home email address, with my phone numbers attached, so they can see I do actually exist.

I am based in Pietermaritzburg, KZN, South Africa. This is the central hub of the KZN Midlands farming community; the place farmers go to buy their supplies and equipment, truck their goods to market, send their kids to school and go to kick back and relax.
So occasionally a cow, a goat or a horse may add a little local colour by finding its way into the story or one of the pictures. It's all part of the ambience!

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