Vehicles that cost about £40,000: a top spec electric Vauxhall Mokka; a Toyota RAV4; a mid-spec Volkswagen ID.3; a mild hybrid petrol front-drive Nissan Qashqai. A brand new Ford Transit.
Said Transit will come with a 2-litre diesel motor that will return around 35mpg most of the time. Plug-in hybrid and pure EV versions are available too. The base spec model will come, as standard, with all the usual comforts such as cruise control, heated seats, air-conditioning, CarPlay and so on, as well as every safety feature you’d expect to find in a car costing the same. The driving position is so imperious it makes a Range Rover feel like a Caterham.
Unlike a car, even a really big car, it can carry 5.8 cubic metres in its vast rear load compartment (a typical full-sized SUV will take about 1.8 cubic metres) and unlike a one-tonne pick-up truck it will carry a load of 1.25 tonnes, and tow 2.5 tonnes more.
But it’s a van, so it will be hideously uncomfortable, noisy and horrid to drive. Except that it isn’t. You sit more upright than usual and that takes some getting used to, but journeys of many hours can come and go with no pain in either your back or backside. Refinement levels are more impressive still: you can sit on a motorway at the maximum speed likely to escape the interest of the law and I’d say it was little or no more noisy than a family hatch. If you wanted to, it could take you past 100mph, though I can’t imagine why you might.
