Never broken any of the ten commandments, he's rubbing out, rubbing out, rubbing them out

On Friday, I bought Mel a new car, a 2002 Vauxhall Zafira Comfort, a very nice MPV. It has 7 seats, five laid out in the normal fashion, and two which fold down into the boot. The plan is, rather than have Annabel squished up with the twins, she will sit in one of the rear seats.

It also means we will be able to take one car for the whole family plus one set of grandparents; twins on the rear seats, grandparents and Annabel in the middle seats. The centre seat has only a lap belt, so it'll be one of the grandparents sitting in the centre; given that Annabel can already undo a 3-point seatbelt, the chances of her staying put with a lap belt are zero.

We got a respectable £350 for red_mel's old VW Golf, not bad for a 15-year old car which was using 2 litres of oil a month, most of which was draining directly onto the clutch plate, resulting in the clutch not so much slipping, as skiing. The dealer also knocked a further £100 off the windscreen price, although I got the feeling that the relatively good price for the Golf was, in reality, money off the ticket price anyway. In the end we paid £3100 for it, plus Mel's old Golf.

The Zafira is in exceptionally good condition, mainly down to the fact that it has only done 44,000 miles and spent most of those being used by a wheelchair-bound chap (it's an ex-Motability car, with the paperwork to prove it). All the other MPVs I'd looked at in the 3-grand range had well over 80,000 miles and their interiors had been shredded by what I presumed to be wild primates and ferral dogs. Ours is near imaculate inside and out - tiny, fingernail scuff above the petrol cap, 6mm chip on the windscreen which will be all of 20 mins for a glass repairer to fix, and the stowage clip for one of the third-row seat belts has been removed (presumably, to make way for the original owner's wheelchair). Other than that and the year of the numberplate, honestly, I'd have a job telling it from new. It also boasted a reassuringly complete dealer service book and the salesdroid included a reasonably decent warranty. Of course, we'll need to put a few thousand miles on it before we're sure it's a good'un.

With only a 1.6 engine to carry its two-tonne mass, albiet multipoint injection, it clearly doesn't go as quick as Mel's 1.8 three-quarter-tonne Golf, but it cruises very nicely. It also manouvers surprisingly well; I found it very easy to park and reverse onto the drive. The only thing I really had to watch out for was the width; nearly 50cm (a foot-and-a-half) wider than my Daihatsu Tonkatoy and more than 30cm (1 foot) wider than Mel's Golf.

The Zafira Comfort comes with a number of modcons, all of which seem to work without fuss, including air conditioning, electric mirrors, boot electric socket, remote central locking, rear armrest/ski slot, lumbar support and whatnot. It also has some nice anti-pregnancy-brain features, such as screaming if you open the driver's door with the lights on or the key in the ignition. The stereo was a simple radio-cassette, so that was top of the list to replace. I'd already bought Mel a nice Bluetooth CD radio for her old car, which in addition to supporting iPod/MP3 aux-in, MP3 CD, USB and SD cards, also supports handsfree phone and A2DP audio playback over Bluetooth. With us both having Nokia N95 phones, this means we can also use the phone as a GPS and have the voice navigation relayed through the car stereo via Bluetooth.

Replacing the cassette-radio with Mel's Bluetooth CD player turned into a bit of a hassle, but in the end I was quite proud of the job I did. Eventually I realised that the old radio was encased in its own purpose-fitting harness, which came out with some Allen key magic (I finally found a use for the extra hex bits that came with my Bosch cordless screwdriver!). After that, there was a minor disagreement between the International Standards Organisation and the CD player about which pin was battery/memory, and which pin was ignition (and no, it wasn't my colour blindness this time). I'm not quite sure who won, but on the offchance that the car's wiring was correct, rather than slicing into the wiring loom, I opted for a trip to Halfords and Maplin to get an extension loom and some proper bullet terminals (hey, any excuse to use a crimping tool, right?), in order to swap the pins over. We had much the same problem - not being sure which lead was battery and which ignition - in Mel's old Golf, which had electrics problems of its own anyway, so it was personally satisfying for me to finally be able to solve the problem. It works perfectly now, and most importantly, turns off when the ignition goes off, and remembers the Bluetooth pairing when the ignition comes back on.

All that remains now is to get a glass company to resin-fix the tiny windscreen chip, and to make sure that the phone cradle stays in place. Given the imaculate condition of the trim, I was determined not to drill into the dash fascia to fit the cradle. Instead I've used sticky pads, but I'm not convinced they'll cope with rough handling. Today I bought some No More Nails removable pads, and a small pot of PVA glue with which to prime the surface, both of which I know will remove without fuss (although I'll test the PVA on a discrete footwell-facing section of the dash first).

Meanwhile, my T-reg 1999 Daihatsu Terios passed yet another MOT and dealer service without fuss. It's now done 173,000 miles without anything major going wrong, and whilst technically I have the "new" car (as in, I have owned it from new; I am its one and solitary owner) and Mel has the second-hand one, I'm very, very jealous of Mel's Zafira. With the Daihatsu's total failure to break down, and the cabin fan recovering well (and quietly) from being invaded by a family of heat-seeking mice, I just can't justify replacing it. And I must admit that even though it's tiny and the engine is underpowered, I do love driving it and its ability to cope with snow, floods and occasional green lanes.