Full review

THIS is no ordinary motorhome and you only have to see the giant roller shutter door at the back to begin to understand why. Lift that door – like opening a domestic lock-up – and you can hardly believe your eyes.

Inside is a real garage with room for up to three motorbikes, or a quad bike, or no end of outdoor gear.

If you use your motorhome for sport (especially of the two-wheeled variety) or even for business, the possibilities are endless. The single trials bike loaned to us via Brownhills for our photoshoot looked positively lost in there, but it gives you an idea of what’s possible.

Just inside the garage door there’s full standing room, while the floor space measures a maximum of 2.14m by 2.20m – that’s more than seven feet in either direction!

There is a step in the floor but this is a totally functional area with drain holes so you can hose it out, tie-downs and a loading ramp. There are even markings on the side walls to show where you can fit shelves for all your gear. And payload back here is up to 400kg, or 250kg when towing.

Total vehicle payload, as standard, is just 510kg though, so you’ll need to drive with empty water tanks or, more probably, investigate the 3800kg upgrade.

One key feature of the Ford Transit base vehicle that’s ideal for this rather specialist role is its towing limit – up to 2000kg – so you’re not limited by how much you can fit in the garage.

If you’re towing a race car then the garage can become home for spares, wheels etc. And although the standard 2.4-litre 140bhp TDCi engine provides plenty of poke, you can upgrade that to a 3.2-litre five-cylinder 200bhp unit for an extra £2600 – which is surely money well spent if you’re going to make the most of that towing capacity.

That engine even beats the fabulous Mercedes V6 CDI for power and torque.

That’s not to say the 2.4-litre engine isn’t capable; it powered this unladen (except for the bike) demo vehicle with surprising pace to up 70mph.

The twin rear wheels and rear-wheel drive also create a feeling of near rock-solid stability, as well as affording extra traction.

It makes the Transit a likeable all-rounder but our test ’van was afflicted with a truly nasty gearshift that made reverse easily confused with first and fifth and sixth difficult to locate.

Oddly, it’s not a problem we’ve come across before with Ford-based motorhomes, but we have previously criticised the too-high driver’s seat.

Any Ford with standard seats on swivel bases suffers here, partly because the steering column has no adjustment. That has to be a priority on the next Transit update.

Looking at the cab, with its utilitarian vinyl floor and van-spec seat trim, gives you a further indication that this is a motorhome that’ll work hard for its living, rather than enjoying a lazy life of leisure.

And if you had any doubts then just look at the heavy-duty vinyl flooring in the whole of the living area – it’s the sort of thing that you more usually see in motorhome garages and it looks perfect to withstand a tough life of oily boots and greasy spillages. There’s not an inch of carpet in sight.

And elsewhere the priorities are practical ones – this is not a luxury vehicle; any unnecessary fripperies have been omitted. But it does what it sets out to do.

Remembering that a considerable proportion of this motorhome has been given over to the garage, what’s left still includes two double beds (a huge one over the cab and a smaller but still adequate one above the garage, neither with slats under their mattress), a compact kitchen, a lounge/diner big enough for four and a washroom big enough to get properly freshened up after a long day’s racing.

In fact, the washroom has obviously been a priority with its separate shower and the wall that swings across to create a huge changing area forward of the back bed.

The open shelves for washroom storage will be less practical, though – everything will spill out onto the floor when driving if it is not re-packed. And the construction of the partition is just far too flimsy for a role that will inevitably result in heavy use.

The kitchen may not be large but with a waist-height 97-litre fridge and a combined oven and grill at eye-level, you’re not short of equipment, even if worktop space is at a premium.

In any case, ready meals and quick snacks will be the order of the day, and there’s plenty of storage as well as a giant sink fed by an equally generous inboard water tank.

You’ll all have room to eat at the wall-mounted table once the cab seats have been swivelled to face the half-dinette but the table extension is not man enough for this job.

A longer version of this review was published in the July 2010 issue of Which Motorhome magazine.