by Brian Byrne.

I’ve long been an advocate of the idea that families should consider van-based cars for the middle years, that period when there’s a lot of ferrying pre-teens, with a lot of gear, and car interiors kind of getting kicked around. Because vans are inherently tough, required to endure much more than the regular car, and are likely to last the pace better.

Of course, we don’t do this much in Ireland, not like our continental cousins who all appreciate the practicalities and aren’t as much held back by what the neighbours might think of the likes of a Caddy Life in one’s drive.

Yep. We’re very image conscious in this respect. Too proud to be practical?

Anyhow, I always enjoy it when I get one of these to try out, for lots of reasons. I guess I’m fond of vans anyway. I drive quite a few of them in my position as a member of the Van Jury of the Irish Motoring Writers Association, and as editor/publisher of Irish Van & Truck magazine. But this is for my passenger car readers.

As a van, the Caddy is the biggest seller in its class, so the fundamentals must be acceptable to a very discerning buyer cohort. With the Life version, it becomes a 7-seat people carrier with a very tidy footprint. In what I think is a nice cheerful shape.

I like one immediate thing. I don’t have to scrunch my head down when getting in or out. Lots of headroom in this respect … I suspect the top of my head has constant bruising from banging and scraping as I enter and egress from most cars, even high end luxury saloons.

Then there’s the driving position in the Caddy Life itself. A nice sit-up one, with great visibility in all directions. A pleasant cockpit ambience, with clear instrumentation, a nice heft to the steering wheel, and rotary knob controls for the climate which beat touch-screen equivalents every time for me.

The review vehicle was in Volkswagen’s Highline grade, so there were various trim additions which made the space even more pleasant. Then the extras on the car, including Alcantara leather seats, heated in front, and full climate control, amongst a long list. Actually, it’s a little hard to work out what was standard and what was extra, but this Caddy Life was fully loaded, and included in the spec was active cruise control, a good navigation system, and rear camera.

Despite a relatively short footprint for a compact MPV, there is surprisingly adequate room for seven occupants, certainly if they’re in the pre-teen and early teens range, where the full complement of seats is useful when bringing their friends to gigs or school too. All five middle and rearmost seats are removable, so you can get the full van capability if there’s a special need. With all seats in use, there’s virtually no space for luggage, though. The sliding side doors allow easy access to both middle and rear spaces.

The review car was powered by the 150hp version of Volkswagen’s 2.0 diesel family, and that made it a very peppy car indeed, very capable on the motorway and easily driven on twistier and climbing roads without having to do much gearshifting. The shift itself is painless, as I expect from most carmakers these days and VW has been providing tidy gearboxes for a long time.

Ride and handling are much more towards the car end of things, and people who drive standard cars will be quite pleasantly surprised that the experience in the Caddy Life is much more than they’d expect. It’s altogether a quite refined experience too, as the muffling of the powertrain and road noise is excellent.

Every week I enjoy driving the different cars I do in this job. There are some weeks that I enjoy more, and you might be surprised which cars make those weeks. The Caddy Life was one of them, I really did enjoy the experience.

It isn’t cheap. As far as I can gather, the car price starts here at around €39,000 on the road. The review version tips in at €45,000, albeit a lot of that extra due to some high-tech additions. There are other compact MPVs that are significantly cheaper (and for another €8,000 you could order a new generation BMW 5 series, for instance), and that’s another reason why, here, there will be few enough of those families I spoke about deciding to switch to the Caddy Life.

This is YOUR comments community. Stay civil, stay constructive, stay on topic.