Long-term report: The Volkswagen Multivan goes the extra mile on two family holidays

Our long-term Volkswagen Multivan is settling nicely into my ‘lifestyle’. So far it’s been faultless on the day-to-day grind, carrying bags of shopping from the supermarket and generally being an easy car to live with.

However, I always find you really get to know a car when you take it on holiday. Or, in the case of the Batchelor family this year, two holidays – how decadent!

I say ‘lifestyle’ in quote marks because the Multivan really is designed for people with Instagram-like lifestyles – way more so than many SUVs which claim to offer this. And there’s no more ‘lifestyle’ than taking the family to Devon.

Before you start thinking of surfboards, rock climbing and sandy beaches, this was a family holiday to celebrate the birthday of my other half’s grandfather. Wanting the grandparents to travel 200 miles from their house in Surrey as comfortably as possible, we offered to take them in the big bus.

The standard configuration for a Multivan is with seven seats – two in the front, two in the middle, and three separate seats in the third row. A six-seat package is a no-cost option, while a ‘seven-seat conference package’ costs £204 and flips the second row around so that they face the rear chairs. Why you’d pay that and not turn the seats around yourself is a mystery to me, but I digress.

Our Multivan is the six-seater with a long gangway and a centre console that slides on rails from the front to the back. Knowing that there was going to be a lot of luggage to take, I removed the two rearmost seats. Pull on a couple of tags and the seat backs fold and the seat bases are unlocked from the rails; that’s the easy part – the seats are rather heavy and it’s a bit cumbersome removing them from the van. With the chairs safely stored on my garage floor (where else do you put them?), it was time to pack the grandparents.

The standard seven-seater configuration comes with armrests for the second row, but for some reason, the six-seater does without them. Aside from that, grandparents James and Margaret found the seats to be very supportive. We slid the seats further towards our front seats so chatting en route was easier, and they had a great view out of the side windows. The rear quarters also get air conditioning with a control panel set in the roof so it was easy for them to adjust the temperature to their liking, too.

The rear accommodation is really well thought out, but two features deserve special mention. As I’ve already said, the centre console can slide from front to rear and it contains a couple of storage cubbies and cupholders. At the press of a button, it rises upwards giving access to two drop-down tables, one on either side. This was great for a mid-journey picnic at the side of the busy A303 (oh, the glamour!), and gave a sturdy table to rest their iPad on which they used to watch TV programmes on the journey – Love Island, or something like that.

The glass panoramic roof is a real boon, though. At £1,050 it sounds expensive when you flick through the brochure, but if you’re considering a Multivan it’s a must-have option. Due to the van’s sheer size, you get a massive glass roof that for rear-seat passengers adds extra light and more opportunities for sight-seeing; I lost count of the number of times the grandparents remarked how lovely it was to see the Devon countryside through all the large windows and the roof. The only negative is I don’t think the roof is tinted enough – more on this later.

With the two rear seats removed, we had an enormous boot. But this was quickly filled up with luggage, the aforementioned picnic, and not one but two mobility scooters. One of them was a lightweight, fold-up thing but even that was heavy to lift up into the Multivan. But the low bumper and flat floor meant it was at least easy to manoeuvre the scooter around. At one point I was concerned we didn’t have the long wheelbase version of the Multivan, which has an extra 200mm of rear overhang, but we managed to pack everything in with a bit of brute force. Who knew elderly people had to bring so much luggage for a week away in Devon?

Over the course of seven days, we racked up 900 miles taking the grandparents to numerous landmarks and famous west country tourist hotspots, and each and every mile was comfortable and refined. Unlike the Caravelle which it replaces, the Multivan isn’t based on a commercial vehicle but on the ‘MQB’ car platform which is used for everything from the Volkswagen Golf to the Audi TT. That gives a comfortable and sophisticated ride and neat handling, but also it doesn’t rattle over potholes or feel workmanlike. I’ll admit I was expecting the 2.0-litre petrol engine to return terrible fuel economy but it didn’t. We averaged 30.1mpg over the 900 miles which was mightily impressive, and changed my view that you always need a diesel engine for such journeys.

The one thing we did notice on our Cornwall and Devon travels was how the Multivan didn’t attract any attention from the VW van community. You don’t have to be a VW fan to know the area is littered with T2 ‘Bay window’ vans, Transporters and Californias and even the odd original T2 ‘splitties’, and owners all wave at each other on the roads. And yet, despite this VW comradery, not once did any VW van driver wave at us despite me waving at them. Perhaps the Mutivan, in its £930 Starlight Blue Metallic, looks a bit too business-like to win VW van fans’ hearts?

Just a few weeks later the Multivan was requisitioned for another holiday, this time with a couple of friends for a long weekend in Bruges. Again we removed the two rear seats and the Multivan slipped through France and into Belgium in sheer style and refinement – it soaked up the motorway drive just as well as a luxury SUV, and you certainly sit up as high as any Range Rover too. The wireless Apple CarPlay was a desirable feature as we used Google Maps instead of the Multivan’s in-built sat nav – anything to avoid using the laggy and frustrating infotainment system is hugely desirable. More on this in my next report.

The Multivan was as much at home with snarled-up British A-roads as it was flying along continental autoroutes, but there were a couple of things that irked.

The glass roof, though brilliant at giving a view of the beautiful buildings in Bruges, really likes to heat up the interior. We travelled on a very warm weekend and waiting in the delayed two-hour Channel Tunnel train queue was a hot and sweaty experience – a blind that could be pulled across the glass or a bit of extra tinting would be very welcome.

And while I’m on the subject of the roof, you really have to be careful of the van’s height. At 1,903mm high it’ll slip under most car park restriction barriers; it certainly did in a tight underground car park at our hotel in the centre of Bruges, but you have to make sure you choose your parking space wisely. A gap between two SUVs looked large enough for the Multivan – and it was – but what I hadn’t noticed was the roof was slightly lower in that part of the car park than at the entrance, and we missed scraping the roof literally by millimetres! With a glass roof the damage would have been very costly.

There are just a few short weeks before the Multivan goes back to Volkswagen and on account of these two holidays, I’m going to be very sad to see it depart. As practical vehicles go, I can’t think of much better than the big VW.