New Volkswagen Caddy: quality upgrade to trade favourite

The interior offers high grade plastics that give a feel of quality

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Diddly-doo, where on earth do we start?

• Right let’s look under the bonnet first. As all vans sold after September 2016 will have to have Euro 6 engines, which cut down on CO2 and NOX emissions, you van buyers might as well get used to the idea now and pitch in. The bad news is that Euro 6 vans will cost more and will have an AdBlue tank that you’ll have to fill up every so often but as stated above, fuel efficiency will rise by up to 15%, so any extra front end cost should even itself out when you visit the pumps less frequently.

There’s another reason for choosing Euro 6 too – the guys at VW have rather craftily decided that some of the wonderful safety features that we’ll mention in a while will only be available on Euro 6 engines, so if you want to carry on living while driving on the roads, you have a much better chance of doing so in a Euro 6 van.

• Cab upgrades. The brand new dashboard is slablike and a tad uninspiring compared to the stylish one in the rival Ford Transit Connect. But it does feature nice high grade plastics that offer a high level of quality. The seats have been made a little softer than the previous Caddy and feature lots of back support. And finally the interior features a number of storage spaces – 17 in all to be precise.
• Hallelujah! At last someone apart from Ford has thought of putting a 12-volt take-off on top of the dashboard so you can plug in your sat-nav unit without having wires trailing everywhere. And talking of useful stuff, there are two coffee cup holders in the centre console. Hugely important for a coffee lover like me
• Safety galore. Just get this list of new safety features. Front assist surround monitoring, which helps shorten stopping distances in the event of an accident, post-collision braking which helps alleviate secondary crash damage, city emergency braking to help prevent rear-end shunts at low speeds, adaptive cruise control that automatically slows the vehicle down if it senses danger ahead, light assist to dim the headlights when an oncoming vehicle appears, rearview camera and parking assist, which parks the van in a space automatically.
• There have been various tweaks and twiddles in the suspension set-up that improve the ride and handling of the new Caddy. We were pretty impressed with what was on offer in the old one to be honest but on our test drives round some pretty hairy hairpins near Marseille, the Caddy proved sure-footed in the extreme. We tried both 75bhp and 102bhp Euro 6 versions. The higher-powered engine felt refined and smooth, with power aplenty in all the right places. But we were also pleasantly surprised by the 75bhp variant too. It did feel a little noisier underway but there was a lot more oomph on offer than we were expecting. Meanwhile the new Caddy is quieter too, which gives the cab a much more upmarket air in general.
• In the back the Caddy hasn’t changed at all. Why fix something that ain’t broke, we say? There will be long and short wheelbase models on offer with between 3.2 and 4.2 cubic metres of space and payloads of up to a tonne as at present and our test models had nice plastic wipe clean floors, although whether they will be a paid-for option isn’t clear at present.