What Van? Britain's biggest and best van buyers' guide

3rd Report

The mean streets of Britain’s major cities and towns are not the Musso Rhino’s natural habitat. 

It’s a big truck when all is said and done, and it’s not ideally suited to bustling urban thoroughfares.

It is far happier pottering down country lanes behind combine harvesters than it is dicing with London buses and black cabs.

Light commercials are often obliged to be versatile, however, and on several occasions recently, Musso Rhino has been required to depart from the green fields of rural Herefordshire, and get among the chimney pots.

So how did it fare? Surprisingly well. 

All-round glazing means that visibility is pretty good anyway, with Blind Spot Detection alerting the driver to any hazards he or she might have missed. 

I’ve already praised Rear Cross-Traffic Alert for saving me from reversing into the path of a tractor. This time it stopped me from straying into the path of a Toyota Prius (must have been an Uber driver) as I backed out of a tight space in a congested underground car park. 

Rhino’s front and rear parking sensors had helped me slide into the slot in the first place, while the remarkably-clear image delivered by the reversing camera ensured that I avoid swiping any concrete pillars as I extricated myself from it. 

The front sensors also helped me squeeze down some painfully-narrow car park ramps without coming to grief. 

Lane Change Assist proved useful on urban motorways, and the vehicle’s automatic transmission meant I could concentrate on what was going on around me without having to worry about which gear I should be in.

If I have any virtues then patience is not one of them, and I seethed with inner rage every time a Lycra-clad big-city cyclist cut in front of me. My inner (and never far from the surface) Mr Grumpy was further triggered by a suggestion flagged up on the instrument panel that I should take a break after I’d been driving for what was admittedly quite a while. 

The advice was probably correct, but I still found it irritating.

Perhaps I should have remembered that the driver’s seat is fitted with a novel system that can cool it down whenever the temperature rises. That might have stopped me getting hot and bothered. 

Having lavished praise on the Musso Rhino for its safety systems, here comes the bad news. What’s there is good, but it isn’t sufficient.

Even entry-level versions of Isuzu’s latest D-Max boast Intelligent Speed Limiter and Traffic Sign Recognition as standard, alongside Forward Collision Warning and Autonomous Emergency Braking. D-Max’s comprehensive safety package helped it clinch the What Van? Pick-up of the Year Award for 2022.