Adria Twin 540 SPT

Berths: 2/3 Travel seats: 4 Base vehicle: Fiat Ducato MWB Gross vehicle weight: 3,300kg Payload: 604kg

New for this season, the 540 SPT plugs an obvious gap in Adria’s Twin line-up. Adria can now offer high-top van conversions on each of the four length variants of Fiat’s Ducato. The baby of the range, the 500S, doesn’t give you the Twin’s defining feature – a permanent bed – but this does, making it the shortest Twin to come thus equipped.

In the UK, we have been a little bit more conservative about the Twin concept, but we’re on board now, accepting that any high-top with a double bed is bound to be compromised in the lounge.

The compensation is that the 540 is of a size for everyday use – and offers a lot more than a standard campervan for holidays.

Like its rivals, Adria posts an artificially low window price for its vehicles, tempting you with all kinds of optional extras. The complimentary Anniversary Pack is very much the big attraction here – loading in front grille trimwork, captain’s style front seats, cab window blinds, electric step, floor carpets, leisure battery, ambient LED interior lighting, gas and electric operation for the Combi 4 heating and hot water system, TV holder and more.

But that still leaves you to fork out a further £1,699 for the Driver’s Pack, with the all-important passenger airbag, cab air-conditioning and cruise control.

It’s the latest Ducato cab, with Adria specifying silver trim around the air vents and chrome-ringed main instruments. The dash features the latest tablet holder, plus 12V and USB sockets. There are neat blinds, thanks to the Anniversary Pack, but those on the passenger’s side may impede the driver’s view of the lower door mirror.

Fiat’s standard 130bhp engine certainly provides a handy performance and, with care, it should be able to turn in 30mpg-plus economy figures. There’s rear seat travel for two, but it’s not the widest of benches. And there’s no obvious stowage point for the table when travelling.

Taking its cue from the metallic exterior, the interior is characterised by styling that is leisure vehicle (contemporary) rather than motorhome (traditional). There are lots of plastic mouldings, not a hint of wood, no carpet anywhere other than on the floor - and that’s removable. It’s all clean-cut and modern, with the white gloss finish to upper locker doors offsetting the grey trim and cabinetwork.

The side door isn’t switched for our UK roads (unlike on Twin 600 SP). But Adria does fit another useful extra, a full flyscreen on the side sliding door.

Nobody’s going to call the lounge roomy, but you get a forward-facing travel seat and twin cab swivels, and a side-fixing table with swing-out extension that’s close enough to the kitchen for meal preparations. All the seating is on the same level, thanks to a false floor.

There’s more storage than you might think. The area over the cab is a proper locker. The offside rear location for the fresh water tank frees up space under the rear travel seat – which has external access. There’s a useful hatch in the lounge floor, and six overhead lockers.

Hinging up the bed base (not easy) means you can have genuine floor-to-ceiling storage, with a quartet of floor-mounted lashing points. The gas locker is also accessed via the back doors. It’s surely too large for a vehicle like this.

Heating and hot water are catered for by Truma’s gas and electric Combi 4 system, with a Secumotion regulator so you can warm things up on the move. The Truma system is iNet-ready, so you can upgrade to operate it via your smartphone.

The kitchen is pretty neat. The two-ring hob and sink combination doesn’t leave a lot of space between the rings, there’s no grill, and it’s hard to see how a microwave or grill could be added.

What there is, however, is a higher-level section of worktop (to allow some hanging space in the wardrobe below) and a compressor fridge with a decent 65-litre capacity. There’s open shelving in the kitchen unit, a slide-out set of three wire baskets, plus a drawer that will easily take a cutlery tray.

The comfort of proper mattresses for that main bed cannot be underestimated. This Twin sleeps two on a transverse double that’s wider on the offside, where you also get two downlighters that happily act as reading lights. A little step is set into the base of the wardrobe. The cubbies in the plastic panelling around the back are very handy for oddments. There are also two lockers each side.

Forget the third berth option, though. It’s too hard to set up, and barely convincing thereafter.

The washroom is sectioned off by two tambour doors, so it can extend across the corridor to ensure complete privacy. The toilet is Thetford’s swivel-bowl model. It’s complemented by a fixed corner basin, a large expanse of mirror and an extension for the mixer tap at the basin to pull out and be used as a shower. There’s a bracket for it to attach to the ceiling, while a section of floor removes to give a somewhat shallow shower tray. There’s also a rooflight, a high-level locker and a tambour door locker. There’s just not a lot of space.

This is an abridged version of the full review appearing in the March 2016 issue of MMM.

Perhaps Adria is trying to hard with this ’van, as unless you want the shortest possible ’van we think the longer 600 SP option is a better bet here. But the Anniversary Pack does include a number of useful extras.