The seven seats earn their keep on a visit to a VW gathering.
Volkswagen Multivan
Month 7
VW helps the MPV live on, masquerading as a van
+ Huge interest among VW owners
- Month’s mpg clobbered by PHEV-unfriendly Ireland trip
Price £59,035 (£63,979 as tested) Performance 13kWh battery plus 1395cc turbocharged four-cylinder, PHEV, 218bhp, 9.0sec 0-62mph, 120mph Efficiency 156.9mpg (official), 34.6mpg (tested), 41g/ km CO2 Energy cost 11.1p per mile Miles this month 3106 Total miles 11,614
Fresh from its trip to Ireland in the hands of Ben Oliver, the Multivan has been thrust straight into fraternising with other VWs at the National Motor Museum in Beaulieu, Hampshire. Why? Well, it’s on our doorstep, our children love the Little Beaulieu playground and we have friends staying who also need to exercise/exhaust their offspring.
Beaulieu’s Simply VW festival for the first time dovetailed with the third and final day of the VW T Chill event. Entertaining family and friends aside, I’m there because every Volkswagen California, Transporter, ID. Buzz or Multivan owner waves when you’re on the road, so I want to see if that camaraderie and enthusiasm existed when you aren’t passing each other at speed.
Joining the queue of early arrivals, the Multivan definitely feels like an interloper. There are all manner of modified GTIs, but on the T side of things – think any VW Transporter since the ’50s, including all camper, people carrier and commercial variants – we are the only new-gen T7 model.
It’s the same story inside the main arena. Yet alongside the usual suspects (every era of hot Golf, plus tuned Polos and Sciroccos, and a plethora of Herbie lookalikes) it doesn’t really matter what you’re in. There is the Eos owners’ club and old Baja-spec and rat-look Beetles, alongside utterly normal Golfs, and a family with both an ID. 5 and a Lupo GTI.
Over 450 VW vehicles attend, and my personal favourite is a Mk6 Golf Estate. Bear with me – it was inspired by the Japanese VIP (or ‘bippu’) culture, which started on big Lexus saloons. It’s bizarre, in the grounds of a British country pile, to see a chandelier and starlight headlining in the back of a diesel Golf. The exquisite final touch is a silk rope across the open rear door to hold back the crowds. It finishes runner-up for the Simply VW People’s Choice Award.
But of course it is vans that are my main focus for the day, and among the big and the boxy it’s the campers that dominate. You can spot them easily, because the unwritten rule is that you park and immediately pop your roof tent.
It was bizarre, in the grounds of a British country pile, to see a chandelier in a diesel Golf
Not that we’d fail to spot Josh and Sarah,
