Commercial and luxurious eight-seater
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awkward for small people but access to the saloon through a nearside sliding door is easy. Loading luggage into the Bus is no problem despite the rear engine. The platform height is only about 8.2mm (36ins high).
The interior of the bus is adequately furnished, offering saloon car comfort with cornmercial vehicle practicality. Its black pvc seats and rubber-covered flooring seemed hard wearing and particularly easy to clean. For those requiring further car cosmetic luxury, more additional trimming is available.
I found the drive pleasing and well up to private car standards. The ride was good — fully and partly laden, and unladen — and I felt the vehicle handled predictably with no tendency to steer from the rear in wet weather.
The independent Volkswagen suspension uses coil springs with a front anti-roll bar. The spare wheel and fuel tank are located at the front to balance the weight of the engine and transmission over the back wheels.
The Bus I used was fitted with the more powerful of two available engine options. The 51kW (70bhp) air-cooled two-litre Volkswagen engine still has the vintage Beetle-like Volkswagen sound, but provides a high level of performance together with acceptable interior and exterior noise levels.
I was surpised to find that the Bus was not fitted with a heater and demister blower. Howeve the engine quickly warmed u and adequate supplies of hot a were soon available to provid almost instant window demis ing and saloon heating.
Adequate through-vehicl ventilation is provided by faci( door and roof level vents. Th only opening windows on th bus were on the driving ca doors and I felt that mor opening windows would hay been and advantage.
The speedometer and a larg clock can be seen without th driver needing to take his ey€ from the road. Apart from th speed and fuel gauge all oth( information necessary for th driver is given by warning light; Controls for the direction ind cators and two-speed wins screen wipers are on steerin column stalks, as are headligl flash and dip controls. The mai light switch, heated rear windo. switch and rear fog light switc are on the dashboard.
The little Volkswagen is multi-purpose vehicle as sui able for an individual with large family as for a busine: that needs to transport person and equipment.
For the driver and front se. passenger, comfort is to saloc car standards, and the visibili is better. Fuel consumption ave aged 21mpg on two-star fu over a varied route which ii cluded high speed motorw( running and urban stop-sta .operation.
This is creditable.
Currently priced at £6,636, ii cluding car tax and vat, th eight-seater represents value f( money.
A diesel version and a lel powerful smaller-engined petr version are also available, ar the air-cooled range is being r placed by a water cooled mod( which I look forward to trying.