Recently, one of the JOE bros had the arduous task of moving out of his one-bedroom apartment and into a three-bed house, so we recruited two Volkswagen Ireland Commercial vehicles to help with the job.
JOE’s resident cameraman (or moving image poacher & manipulator, as he prefers to be called), Peter Cooney, was recently tasked with moving the contents of his cosy one-bedroom apartment on Clanbrassil Street into a three-bedroom gaf in Clontarf (well for some!).
However, the idea of filling up his small Fiat Punto several times over didn’t bode well with our Peter, or with myself, Oisin Collins, and so I decided to lend a hand. Thankfully, the kind folk over at Volkswagen Ireland Commercial Vehicles got wind of our moving plans and they offered us the use of the VW Transporter and VW Amarok in order to make the job a little less taxing.
As it turned out, it was A LOT less taxing thanks to the Transporter. So much so that we didn’t even need to use the Amarok for transporting purposes.
If you’ve ever had to move house in one day then you’ll know just how much of a pain in the ass having to move actually is. You forget about all the little trinkets that were given to you either by late relatives or friends that you haven’t seen in a while – the ones that you just can’t bring yourself to throw away – and you end up with large boxes filled to the brim with protective bubble wrap and only one fragile piece inside.
That approach doesn’t give you a lot of room to manoeuvre, especially if you’re using a hatchback to transport your personal belongings from house to house, but thanks to the Transporter, Peter and I managed to fit everything in his apartment into the back of the Transporter in one go.
After all, two trips are for the weak…
We’re lucky enough to test drive quite a few cars here at JOE and one of the fundamental things that a car needs in order to be appealing to a large market is to look good – it’s a bit of a ‘no brainer’, in fairness.
However, the average buyer of a large van will be using it mainly for work purposes and looks mean f*ck all when you’re lugging stuff around on a filthy construction site or from one side of the country to the other. But in fairness to the Transporter, it’s genuinely one of the nicer-looking vehicles available in the commercial sector.
We had the use of the long wheelbase Transporter with the Trendline trim and apart from being an absolute breeze to drive it was also extremely comfortable just to be in, as well as being quite the looker as mentioned above. With the Trendline trim, the bumpers and wing mirrors are supplied in the same colour as the rest of the van, instead of the black plastic that you usually see, and this really helps to make the Transporter stand out.
If you’ve never driven a van before then you may find the driving position resembles sitting at a dinner table more so than sitting in car and while I wasn’t too sure what to make of the seating position at first, it really grew on me and I actually found it to be quite enjoyable – although I’m sure the novelty of driving a van was also a factor in that.
The long wheelbase Transporter has a compartment volume of 6.7 m³ and it can carry up to 1,387kg without any hassle. It also comes with a rake of storage pockets in the cabin which I’m sure would come extremely handy for anyone who has to do a lot of paperwork while out on the job.
All in all, I couldn’t imagine having to haul all of Peter’s house contents from Dublin City Centre to Clontarf in the back of his Punto several times over and if I could leave you with one piece of advice, if you’re moving house that is, it would be to get your hands on a Transporter and to start playing Tetris again…
As for the Amarok, we didn’t need to use it during the move, but make sure to keep an eye out on the site over the coming week as we’ll have a full review here in the motors section. It really was a pleasure to drive.
To find out more about the Volkswagen Transporter head over to the Volkswagen Ireland Commercial Vehicles website here.
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