The increasing prevalence of bolder sport styling on new commercial vehicles might simply be evidence that vans, lorries and pick-up trucks inevitably follow where market trends for passenger cars lead. This week's road test subject, however, suggests that something more interesting could be afoot.
Some buyers of these super-functional, hard-working utility vehicles might be ready for more serious pseudo-performance van derivatives, right out of the showroom, than they have hitherto been offered. They might even be ready to pay surprisingly high prices for them.
The Transporter Sportline is the new range-topping version of Volkswagen’s mid-sized van. Having been added to the Transporter range in 2021 shortly after a mid-life facelift for the T6-generation vehicle dubbed the T6.1, the Sportline adds more than a few tokenistic performance-aping exterior styling touches. Its specification includes 18-inch alloy wheels with performance tyres, lowered sports suspension and part-leather sports seats, as well as the dinky roof spoiler and eye-catching front bumper pictured on these pages.
So what are we to make of the idea of a 2.1-tonne utility monocab that wears hot hatch garb at least semi-seriously? Is this a real attempt at a cargo carrier with a little added driver appeal? Or is it simply a dose of visual razzle-dazzle for the entrepreneur who wants the world to know his bathroom-fitting business is doing well? And whichever it is, does that have implications for how functional or useful this vehicle is in its primary purpose?
VW offers twin side-hinged boot doors on lesser models, but Sportlines are tailgate-only, with powered lifting. Loadbay area is up to 2.5m in length.
DESIGN AND ENGINEERING
This vehicle joins a Transporter model line-up that already caters to all manner of purposes. If you want Sportline trim, you’re restricted to either a standard panel van body or a Kombi crew van (which has a removable second row of seats and can therefore accommodate up to six occupants). There is only one engine option, which is the same 201bhp 2.0-litre twin-turbocharged diesel that serves in other top-end Transporter models, so there’s no direct power boost to report here.
You can only have a two-pedal dual-clutch automatic gearbox. And while you get a choice of wheelbase lengths (3m or 3.4m), there’s only one default choice of roof height and carrying capacity (all Transporter Sportlines are based on VW’s T32 chassis specification, with maximum payload ratings ranging from just under to just over 1 tonne).
Elsewhere in the wider line-up,of course, configurability is the Transporter’s middle name. The entry-level Startline short-wheelbase panel van comes with a 109bhp 2.0-litre diesel engine and front-wheel drive; and it will haul 800kg of cargo or swallow a couple of Euro 3 pallets in its hindquarters.
The engines progress up to the 201bhp 2.0-litre oil-burner of our test car, and all come from VW’s EA288 four-pot diesel family, with a fully electric option now available in the shape of the ABT e-Transporter. Those engines mount transversely in the front of the vehicle, with drive going to the front wheels in all but the Haldex-style 4Motion versions.
Top Driving position will be a high climb for most. Front seats look semi-sporty but lack useful lateral and under-thigh support.
Above Rear seats offer generous space for adults. They also fold flat, can be removed entirely and when in place also offer through-loading space under the bases. Photos © Autocar
There is a Transporter Shuttle model for those who need more than six seats in a strictly commercial version of the vehicle, and also the plusher Caravelle upmarket people mover and the California camper, of course. Pretty much whatever useful purpose you imagine putting a big monocab vehicle to, then, the Transporter ought to be able to meet it in one of its many guises.
The Transporter switched to modern monocoque chassis construction in its fourth generation. The latest version has electromechanical power steering not least so that it can offer up-to-date driver assistance systems, as well as all-independent suspension via struts at the front axle and semi-trailing arms at the rear, and coil springs.
As such, this is a prime candidate among vans of its size for a light performance makeover — even if VW has employed the lightest of touches in that respect. A set of 18-inch alloy wheels — bigger in diameter and wider of rim, and fitted with wider, lower-profile tyres, than any other Transporter uses — come as standard. They roll underneath Eibach sports springs that lower the vehicle 30mm closer to the road than other Transporters are carried.
There is no brake upgrade for the vehicle and you can’t get VW’s adaptive dampers (which are optional on other derivatives), the Sportline sticking with the Transporter’s standard-fit load-sensitive passive shock absorbers.
The Transporter still uses the old 8.0-inch Discover Media touchscreen infotainment system of Volkswagen’s last-generation passenger car models.
INTERIOR
The Transporter Sportline may have sporty aspirations, but it’s still a van — and as soon as you hear the slightly reverberant clang of the driver’s door as it closes behind you, you’ll know as much. Once you’re in, you find seats that make only a gesture at sportiness (part-leather upholstery and red stitching, but short cushions and no side bolstering, and little or no lateral support). They offer great forward visibility, though, and are comfortable enough if you adopt the tradesman-favoured jacked-up driving position. There are also handles on the cab’s A-pillars for those who want to use a free hand to better secure their body weight during faster cornering than the seat design is given to do. Still, a van’s a van and, ergonomically at least, this one doesn’t do much differently from any other.
You get a leather steering wheel, digital instruments, an 8.0-inch touchscreen infotainment system, and a few metallised highlights and bits of slightly showy trim for your money. The Transporter’s dashboard is made uniformly of hard, scratch-resistant mouldings, while the cab is carpeted and well furnished for storage cubbies and cupholders, on the upper and lower dashboard and in the door consoles.
In the back, two glazed, power-sliding rear passenger doors come as standard. The rear seats (Kombi crew vans have two rows) divide into a two-seater unit on the offside and an individual chair on the nearside of the vehicle. Both fold forward, and the latter also leans forward to allow access to the cargo area through the nearside side door.
Both seat units can also be removed entirely (although they’re heavy and awkward), opening up a vast loading area that we measured at just over 2.5m in total length — and that’s in the short-wheelbase version. Even with the rear seats in place, there’s room to thread longer items along the floor and underneath the back seat cushions if you need to. The loading area in five-seat mode is more than 1.5m long anyway, as well as more than 1.5m wide at its widest, and approaching 1.5m tall from floor to ceiling. That’s much more room than you would get in any SUV or big people carrier, and there are lashing eyes to secure heavier loads.
PERFORMANCE
As we’ve mentioned, the particular specification and tuning of the Transporter Sportline’s 2.0-litre BiTDI diesel engine and its seven-speed dual-clutch gearbox aren’t anything special. There isn’t even a sports exhaust or a Sport driving mode here, which the vehicle could certainly do with.
It’s fairly brisk and flexible on the road; not assertively fast, but probably about as quick as you would want a load carrier of this type to be. Our test car managed 160kph from rest within a standing kilometre, so it clearly wouldn’t make you late for opening time at the builders’ merchant. Even so, it needed a little over 9secs to hit 100kph from rest.
The DSG gearbox feels short-legged on the road, as you would expect of a van. It won’t do 65kph in second gear, and you will find fourth and fifth are your most useful driving gears as you speed up out of town. But torque comes stoutly at low revs, and so pulling higher gears even with a load on board wouldn’t be a problem.
Braking performance on test was very respectable, the Transporter stopping from 110kph in less than 50m even in slightly damp conditions. But the brake is a little grabby at the top of the pedal and can be irksome in stop-and-start traffic, which is evidence that vans like this still aren’t quite finished to the same dynamic standard as equivalently priced passenger cars in some respects.
Sliding rear doors are motorised and can be opened and closed by pressing a button on the dash. Handy if a rear passenger got out and forgot to pull the door to.
VERDICT
The Autocar road test dips only rarely into the world of the commercial vehicle, but when we do, it’s almost always because we have been tempted by the prospect of something extraordinary.
The Volkswagen Transporter Sportline looked as if it might have that kind of potential; to be a corollary of the Ranger Raptor, and do for the workaday van what the Ford helped to do for the pick-up truck a few years ago, kindling interest and making people look anew at a vehicle concept they had always overlooked before.
The versatile, cavernous, hard-working van certainly deserves a champion, but in the end, this Transporter fails to break away on a path of its own. It may look intriguing, but it fails to offer anything dynamically to really set it apart from any other panel van, or that justifies you paying a premium for. Performance is lukewarm; handling, roadholding and body control are as a whole only marginally above the van-segment standard; and the desirability-boosting premium features don’t divert your attention for long from what would be a very functional but broadly ordinary van driving and owning experience. Autocar
The Transporter still uses the old 8.0-inch Discover Media touchscreen infotainment system of Volkswagen’s last-generation passenger car models.
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