Vauxhall Combo-e Life review

First, you need to choose whether you want five or seven seats in your Vauxhall Combo-e Life. Then you need to decide if you want the regular-length (M) car or the stretched XL version.

So far, we’ve only tried the regular five-seater, and even that’s really spacious. There’s so much head room in the front and back that you could almost be in a townhouse. Rear leg room is generous too, and both outer rear seats have Isofix mounting points for child seats.

Although we haven’t tried the seven-seater, it’s pretty obvious that head room won’t be in short supply for third-row occupants. The extra two seats can be folded down out of the way or even be removed from the car completely.

As for boot space, there’s loads of it. Even the regular five-seater has nearly 600 litres below the parcel shelf, which is more than the Volkswagen Touran and some much pricier large SUVs. The boot is square, the aperture matches the width of the boot floor and there’s no lip at the entrance.

The only annoyance is the huge tailgate, which can only be opened when there’s plenty of clearance behind the car and is quite awkward to pull shut (there's no powered opening option). The saving grace is that you can open the glass instead of the whole tailgate when you want to load in smaller items.