Reverse Logic

Our Crafter 3.0-tonner has got one and we can testify to its usefulness. Mounted above the back doors — we’ve lost count of the number of people who’ve asked us what that funny-looking object is — it’s hooked up to a 7in monitor that flips up from a shelf in the middle of the dashboard.

Engage reverse and the monitor displays exactly what’s behind you. We’re convinced that it has saved us time and again from the embarrassment of dented rear panels and a bashed back bumper.

Something we’ve also learned, however, is not to rely on the camera completely. If you’re going backwards then it’s essential to keep glancing in the exterior rear view mirrors too. If you don’t then you can guarantee that you’ll end up swiping something that’s suddenly appeared alongside you.

Our test van is equipped with electrically-adjustable and heated exterior rear view mirrors for an extra £175; all prices quoted here exclude VAT. They’ve each got a useful, separate, lower wide-angle section.

The camera has two drawbacks. Damp early mornings can mist the lens slightly and the monitor steals some oddment storage space.

We feel the screen should be integrated more fully into the rest of the van’s design. On the new Vauxhall Movano/Renault Master, for instance, it’s built into the sun visor while a Mercedes-Benz Sprinter we drove recently had one positioned in the middle of the dashboard.

OK, those screens are probably not quite as big as Crafter’s, but they’re perfectly capable of doing the job.

Fortunately the camera appears to be quite robust. A noisy encounter with some overhanging tree branches made us wonder if we’d damaged it, but it suffered no ill effects. Nor did the van’s roof.

Crafter’s magic eye forms part of a £1,025 package that also includes front and rear reversing sensors. The screen is one of the few extras in a three-man cab interior that is otherwise fairly basic aside from a radio/CD player, electric windows and air conditioning.

The last-named feature costs £955 and is worth every penny when you start to roast in yet another M25 traffic jam.

Durability

Although you get ample head and shoulder room and there is plenty of space to stow bottles of water, clipboards and so on, the cab’s interior is alas rather dull. We can live with dull, however, if it also equates to durable; and Crafter’s has withstood several months of usage without wilting.

Dirty jeans and equally-grubby tee-shirts have left the seats unmarked and the floor has stood up well to the tramp of muddy working boots; and our test van has certainly worked.

Regular weekly hikes between north Cambridgeshire and south Herefordshire weighed down with bricks, bags of gravel, tins of paint, ladders and assorted tools have been replaced by more lightly-laden trips to such exotic locations as Slough, Huddersfield and West Thurrock in Essex. Our demonstrator has tackled local delivery runs too, shifting everything from crates of booze and boxes of books to a small mountain of waste cardboard.

To date every trip has been completed without drama or mishap, with a little bit of creaking from the rear suspension the only evidence that Crafter has been kept busy.

As we’ve said previously, it boasts surprisingly-good handling with ample feedback through the steering plus a reasonably-compliant ride over Britain’s rapidly-disintegrating road surfaces; and those surfaces are going to get worse and worse in the new age of austerity.

While the six-speed manual box’s gearchange co-operates with the driver most of the time, it is a bit noisy. Happily it’s the only bit of Crafter that is; engine, road and wind noise are all well-suppressed.