Full review

THE Danbury Surf impresses with its willing 102bhp engine, smart looks inside and out and high levels of equipment.

First impressions are pretty good. You can’t really go wrong with Volkswagen’s special motorhome-base T5, especially when it’s finished in a natty shade of metallic blue (complete with colour-coded bumpers, door mirror housings and wind-out awning) and finished off by a set of alloy wheels and front driving lights.

Certainly, if your intention is to use the Surf as a day-to-day car (and most owners will), then you won’t look or feel out of place in the golf-club car park, that’s for sure.

There’s more good news when you come to drive the Surf, too. 102bhp doesn’t sound like much in these enlightened days of routine 130bhp budget coachbuilts, but it’s more than enough in something like this.

Performance is brisk rather than vivid, and you do occasionally miss sixth gear at motorway speeds (although you can remedy this by opting for one of the bigger engines allied to a six-speed gearbox). It’s a nicely refined unit, though and the five-speed ‘box pleasing in use.

The Surf measures two metres or just over 6ft 6in high with the roof down, meaning it’s likely to be a very tight fit beneath typical public car park height barriers or in domestic garages, but once you arrive on-site, the chore (if it can be termed thus) of elevating the roof is eased by the provision of a standard-fit electric roof.

Simply insert a key into a slot inside the sliding door, thumb the button and watch as the roof hums quietly heavenwards before tightening the fabric roof sidewalls and cutting out.

You can specify a high-top version instead, but this brings the overall height to a couple of inches shy of 7ft – and any notion of even looking at a public car park completely out of the question.

Stepping inside our test model was rather akin to entering a world of leather, thanks to the (optional) hide-swathed seats front and back, and kicking back and relaxing herein looks likely to be a default setting for Surf owners thanks to the trademark acres of legroom and good part-LED lighting.

There’s plenty of storage space beneath the settee, too, and while access to same is possible from the lounge via the metal seat base, I would have preferred to have seen a couple of floor-level doors, as you’d get in a Bilbo’s, not least as this is also where the fuses, trips, battery charger and gas cocks live.

The kitchen area’s modern, curved unit on the far left swings open to reveal a 50-litre Waeco compressor fridge and more storage, including a lidded cutlery drawer, an open cupboard and a second lockable drawer. Elsewhere, there’s a deep drawer beneath the two-burner hob and grill, together with a second locker at floor level, which houses the optional Porta-Potti.

Our early test model also sported some rather attractive and heavy-feeling black marble-effect worktops, and while these will definitely make it into production, the unsatisfactory lift-out flush-fit surface panel to the right of the cooker, which accesses the storage void beneath, will not.

Instead, the worktop will remain fixed and be replaced by a front-mounted drawer.

Come bed-time, withdrawing the rock ‘n’ roll bed from the settee is reassuringly straightforward, with only a couple of small infills required to create a bed that’s a healthy (if not exactly class-leading) 6ft 2in by 3ft 5in-4ft 2in.

There’s a reading light at the head (tailgate) end, too, and a reasonable amount of space ahead of the foot end to use the loo in the night. The occupant of the roof bed gets a wind-up glass sunroof, too.

Storage elsewhere is healthy, with the rear offside corner area housing a wardrobe and the passenger seat concealing a lidded storage locker. There’s a handy drawer under the rear bench, too.

Verdict
The Surf majors on equipment, style and a well-equipped kitchen. Adding various options does bump up the price considerably, though.

A full version of this review first appeared in the October 2008 issue of Which Motorcaravan. To subscribe to the magazine, click here.