The Transporter has performed ably as an honest-to-goodness workhorse over the past few weeks.
A house move meant that it made repeated trips from Peterborough to Ross-on-Wye and back, always heavily laden on the outward leg of the journey. On one occasion it was loaded with almost the entire contents of a large home office, including still-full filing cabinets, several crates of books and a computer system, not to mention a chair or two, but the extra weight made little or no difference to its on-the-road behaviour. It still pulled strongly away from rest and happily held its own on motorways and dual carriageways. With 102hp on tap it is not the most powerful Transporter, but in our case it was certainly on top of the job. Nor did it seemed especially perturbed by repeated openings and slammings of the rear and side doors.
Mention should be made of its low-speed manoeuvrability. On-street parking in the centre of Ross-on-Wye is at a premium, so if you see a gap, you go for it. The Transporter happily wriggled into a tight slot between a Vauxhall Frontera and a skip, leaving just enough room for us to load a large glass-fronted display case to house the writer’s extensive collection of model vans, trucks, buses and coaches.
