• Ever since the new Volkswagen Transporter emerged from hiding
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last autumn, it has been clear that the van market has a serious new challenger.
Although other manufacturers displayed refined or remodelled panel vans at last September's Motor Show, subsequent experience has confirmed our suspicion that none of these offers operators enough to disturb the van status quo.
The Transporter, on the other hand, was new from the ground up, and represented as radical a departure from its embarrassingly long-lived rear-engined namesake as we could have expected. So despite only threatening the lighter end of the market up to 2.8 tonnes, it was clearly a more significant arrival.
Having waited patiently for stocks to reach these shores, we found the VW in impressive form in its first full test a month ago (CM 18-24 April), proving itself worthy to take on the established boss, in what was destined to be the ultimate tussle of current one-tonne vans.
Its opponent, of course, is the Ford Transit. Apart from lending its name to this class of panel van, the Transit continues to swallow a healthy share of the UK market between 2.3 and 3.5 tonnes, and is a significant player elsewhere.
In the red corner, therefore, we have the same VW we featured before: a 1,000kg short-wheelbase panel van with a 2.4-litre IDI diesel. And in the blue corner is a shortwheelbase Transit, relying on the familiar 2.5-litre DI diesel. Ford's contender is the 110 model in Standard trim, which has a higher payload potential than the VW, but is in virtually every other respect identical to the 100 that comes closer to its rival in capacity and price.
We therefore conducted our laden testing with an identical gross load of just over a tonne in both vans, so neither one had an unfair advantage. Bear in mind when comparing the two vehicles that the extra cost of the 110 Transit does pay for an additional 110kg of payload potential.