AN TG 460A XXL 5x2
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• Apart from a few niggling details, a night away in the XXL-cab of MAN's brand new TG-A was a pleasant experience. The mattress felt okay, if a little on the soft side, with no intrusion from the seats as the dashboard is built close to the windscreen, leaving room in the cab to adjust the seats without running into the bunk.
There's also plenty of room between the seats to move around, so getting dressed and undressed is easy.
The fridge can be stowed under the bed and incorporates a handy step to reach the top bunk. Not all the room under the bed is used for luggage; there are two big lockers under the bed which can be reached from the outside.
A bedside panel with switches to control the side windows, heater, interior lights and sliding roof has become routine equipment over the past few years allowing the driver to stay in his sleeping bag while adjusting his environment.
MAN has moved this panel to a place behind the gearlever, so you have to get out of bed to adjust anything.
Lack of planning is also shown in the thin curtains, which let too much light through. Considering the amount of glass in the XXL cab, this is particularly annoying. On the plus side MAN has used proper curtain rails so the curtains are easy to move. Talking of glass, the windscreen is enormous, but its unusual height does little to improve forward visibility Fitting the more conventional windscreen from the lower XL-cab in combination with the high XXL-roof would enable MAN to increase stowage space and bring the stowage capacity of the new range up to the level of the old F 2000.
Lowering the upper bunk in the cab is easy, once you learn the trick, though the cable locking mechanism came loose on this pre-production model. Considering that the industry has contracted to just seven makes, it's astonishing how many different ways designers find to adjust something as straightforward as a bunk.