Vauxhall Zafira Tourer to undercut Ford S-Max price by over £1,200

Vauxhall Zafira Tourer undercuts the S-Max on price

It’s been announced that the Vauxhall Zafira Tourer – which debuted this week at Frankfurt 2011 – will undercut the Ford S-Max by over £1200.

We had the usual tease for the Vauxhall Zafira Tourer – Vauxhall’s answer to the Ford S-Max – earlier this year, with the Zafira Tourer finally turning up at the Geneva Motor Show in the Spring and a proper, production reveal a couple of months later.

And it looks a convincing effort by Vauxhall to take the fight to the S-Max in the ‘Sporty’ MPV stakes. If any MPV can ever be considered a ‘Sporty’ proposition, that is.

With underpinnings based on the more than able Vauxhall Insignia, the Zafira Tourer should be off to a flying start. It gets a bit of a stretch to suit the commodious Zafira Tourer and a wider track to compensate for the extra length, so as MPVs go the Tourer should be up there with the best.

It’s clever too, with Flex7 seating which lets the back row of seats fold flat and move up, down, sideways and flip over if you feel like it. Well, not quite, but it does make for easily configurable and flexible seating options, depending on your load/passenger ratio.

There’s also a decent set of engine options to suit most budgets and wants, with three flavours of 2.0 litre diesel, a 1.8 litre petrol and a 1.4 litre turbo petrol too. Sadly, we doubt there will be a Zafira Tourer VXR, even though it sounds like it could be a hoot with the Tourer’s Insignia underpinnings.

And now comes the icing on the cake – or maybe the only way to get buyers’ attention, depending on how cynical you are – with the news that the Zafira Tourer can be grabbed for £21,000, £1200 less than the car Vauxhall consder the real competition – the Ford S-Max.

The basis of the ‘£1200 less than the S-Max’ claim is the Zafira Tourer ES 1.8 (140PS), which comes with a decent level of kit, including AirCon, Cruise, DAB, MP3 and 7-speaker audio.

To be honest, this is the only price Vauxhall has divvied up so far, so we don’t know if the Zafira Tourer will undercut the S-Max across the range, or just on this model.

But it’s a decent opening salvo for the Zafira Tourer’s marketing campaign.