Oh well.....
Who would you rather listen to - a magazine writer (who may have his/her own agenda anyway), or the people who actually use the car day in day out.
The nature of these forums is we tend to see problems more than anything else, because people only tend to want help when there's a problem, but if you look at the numbers, the Ulysse/C8/807 is no worse than a lot of other cars on the road.
It's a fact of life that if things are going well with something you tend to forget about it and deal with problems elsewhere - it'd be nice for a change to see more posts from people with positive comments, however I realise that it probably won't happen!
From my own viewpoint, I realise there are better cars on the road than the Ulysse, however there are few comparable full size MPVs on the road (and lets remember that we have MPVs for a reason!). If I didn't need it, I wouldn't have chosen an MPV at all, but as I do need an MPV, I'm happy with my choice.
Safety and space were my two main decision makers with cost a 3rd factor. There are only two full-size MPV types with a 5-star Eurp NCAP rating (the new Espace, and the Eurovan2 [aka Ulysse, C* or 807]). Of these, the EV2 has more space than the standard Espace, and the Grand Espace is way too expensive, and of the various EV2 vendors, the Fiat was the cheapest in the UK at list when I made my decision (and as it's a company car the list price is all important).
Once you make a decision like that, you tend to be stuck with the outcome, however it wasn't made without a good comparison (including long test drives, searches for user experiences on the web, etc etc), and at the time I could find nothing to counter the base decision. Renault Espace owners are having their fair share of 'fun' also.....
John