2.2 CRDi (7 seat) 5dr 4 X 4

engine overheated without warning - a major disappointment and huge expense

I was looking for a good value 7 seater 4WD and it came down to the Sante FE or the Chevrolet Captiva. Reading around a bit, the Sante Fe seemed to have a slight edge so I picked one up from a dealer. The car itself has some annoying things which are really just niggles that you can get used to (indicator lever on the wrong side, light under sun visor stays on if mirror is retracted but sun visor closed). Handling is rough and seems to notice every bump in the road. Without the 2 rear seats folded up the boot space is huge. On its final journey the heating stopped working, there was a reduction in engine power and it came to a halt. The engine coolant had leaked out without any indication of overheating on the dash. The breakdown man mentioned he'd seen a couple of water pump failures which caused a similar fault, although the water pump was fine in this case - it had leaked from the engine head gasket.

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