VANS
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ON TES T
DAIHATSU HIJET
Price as tested: £6,375 ex-VAT (£6,195 plus centre console £55, radio/cassette £77, load mat £48). Engine: 1.2 litres, 35hp (26kW). GVVV: 1 ,550kg. Payload: 575kg. Fuel consumption (laden): 40.2nnpg (7.014/100km).
It's Spring (almost) and the catwalks of London, Paris and Milan throng with new collections. Fashion's theme this year, as any Vogue reader will tell you,
is minimalism making the most of as little as possible. Frippery, gaudiness and excess are OUT.
Economy, straightforward colours and simple shapes are IN. So what better for the style-conscious urban operator than a tidy little Daihatsu Hijet Diesel?
Yes, the tiniest panel van on the market (apart from the Suzuki Supercarry, its only microvan competitor) can now be bought with an appropriately tiny diesel engine, promising improved fuel consumption.
In place of Daihatsu's own LO. litre, three-cylinder petrol unit comes a 1.2-litre, four-cylinder Lombardini diesel, putting out just 35hp (26kW) three-quarters the output of the 47hp (35kW) petrol engine.
Otherwise the Hijet, assembled by Piaggio in Tuscany, remains largely unchanged. Inevitably the diesel is heavier than the petrol engine, so the payload goes down from 600kg to 575kg at the same gross weight of 1,550kg. The only visible distinction is a vented plastic grille for the diesel. None but the very saddest van-spotters will notice that.
Service intervals remain the same at 6.000 miles or six months (with a free courtesy van in the meantime) and the Hijet benefits from that excellent Japanese tradition—the three-year/60,000 mile warranty.
What do you pay for all this sameness? Just £200 more than the petrol model, at a shade over six thousand pounds—undercutting the nearest diesel van (Renault's Clio) by £415, and a full grand less than the nearest diesel high-cube vans. Open-air operators might prefer Daihatsu's country collection: the Hijet Pickup (at £5,995) which offers a payload of 680kg.
Daihatsu is expecting to sell 3,500 Hijets during 1996, up from 2,000 last year. So will the diesel be a help or a hindrance?
• Productivity
The microvan's strong point has always been its loadspace: a nice rectangular box with doors on three sides. And true enough,
the Hijet puts most car
g 4111111111111k derived vans to shame in both quantity and quality 288m, there is a sliding load door either side and a big, highrise tailgate at the rear, and the load bed is a reasonable 540mm above the ground. It's laughably easy to load and unload.
But where there's
ointment, you're bound to find a fly. The Hijet suffers from a complete lack of tiedown points, without even a hole in the side ribs to take a rope. On the other hand, our test vehicle turned up with a fitted mat of ribbed rubber on the floor, ideal for the shopkeepers and florists at whom the Hijet is traditionally marketed. It's certainly more practical than the slippery plastic load liner provided with the last Hijet CM tested.
It's worth pointing out that Daihatsu now has an arrangement with racking manufacturer Bott, who can kit out your Hijet with all the bins, drawers, hooks and shelves your heart could desire.
The Hijet's engine is mounted beneath the seats, so the seats have to be tilted back to gain access. This is no problem, as long as there is no load on board—and no load liner. And of course, it rules a bulkhead out of the question. Fine, you say, for driving lightly laden round town, that's not a problem: but just to top up the windscreen washer you need to tilt the seats back There's another niggle. Useful though the tailgate is for sheltering from the rain, it tends to pick up a lot of mud and could do with a "Duchess strap". The panels are thin too, and the doors shut with all the authority of a tea caddy.
Back to more concrete matters. The payload is more than competitive with most panel vans (apart from heavyweights like the Vauxhall Corsa 775) and there's 130kg of load tolerance.
The Hijet's fuel economy is fair too, though the diesel had to work pretty hard on our Kent urban/Aroad/motorway test route. The laden result of 40.2mpg (7.01it/100km) is 15% better than the EFi petrol model's, and close to Daihatsu's quoted urban figure of 41.5mpg. However, it doesn't threaten more modern carderived high-cubes such as the Ford Courier or Vauxhall Combo, which return figures in the high forties.
• On the road
Driving a microvan is an acquired taste and, like most acquired tastes, it's bittersweet. In town, the narrow track and short wheelbase are a joy, opening up gaps in traffic and making unscheduled U-turns a doddle.
The upright driving position and square-cornered shape sim
plify parking, too though the unassisted steering (even with 12inch wheels) can be surprisingly heavy at times.
But on the open road, and particularly the motorway, these virtues become liabilities. The large side area and short chassis make the van very susceptible to sidewinds.
As with the last Hijet we tested, at first it was too windy for us to venture on to the M25 for our standard fuel test. When we did brave the motorway, we discovered the limitations of the Lotnbardini diesel.
There's no getting away from it: the diesel Hijet is slow. Not just
slow, but SLOW The slightest wind made it impossible to reach the 70mph limit, and our average speed of 35.9mph (57.8km/h) round the Kent route was one of the slowest ever. But the clincher was its performance (if that's the word) on our M20 hill climb. Most laden panel vans can do it in around 3min 25sec, while a flyer will do it in less than three minutes. The diesel Hijet took a full four minutes, slowing to just 40mph in the process.
The trouble is that the engine is not much more impressive in town. With such a small displace. ment it lacks flexibility, and needs far more gearchanges than its petrol sibling despite a similar peak torque rating In turn, this makes it noisy (despite extra sound insulation) and tiring to drive.
If the engine is too small, so is the cab: but there's not a lot you can do within such a small enve. lope. The seats are tiny, shoulder room is limited and the footwell is as snug as a favourite welly— there's a clear risk of wrenching one's knee on entry or exit.
The Hijet's cab is a good advertisement for Italian build quality, but its Japanese ergonomics are less convincing. The archaic right-hand indicator stalk is infuriating, and the horn push seems to be activated by the least breadl of wind.
• SUMMarY
So is it worth paying more for less power? We think not. The petrol-engined Hijet is more useable in town or on the open road. The diesel's fuel economy advantage is likely to be appreciated only by an all-diesel fleet or a high-mileage user—and who uses a microvan for high-mileage work?
The diesel Hijet just confirms our prejudices about microvans. They're handy round town, with a superlative load space—but for distance work, they are an exhausting handful.
Why wear hobnail boots with a business suit? It am only be a fashion statement.
Li by Toby Clark