Not sure why the author or this article from South Africa has chosen this particular title for the article. It seems ludicrous to compare a modern vehicle with it 50yo predecessor but that's what they've gone with.....
Full credit for this article goes to the original publisher:
http://www.bdlive.co.za/opinion/columnists/2016/02/02/vrroom-with-a-view-new-caravelle-miles-ahead-of-old-volkswagen-kombis
" One of the not-exactly-tragic byproducts of writing a column on cars is that sometimes there are too many cars — one can blend into the next and they won’t all feature in a weekly column.
This Christmas, I had the use of a new Volkswagen Caravelle for the duration of my two-week stay near Durban and, given that it was a family holiday at the beach, we might have made a reasonably good stab at being that middle-class South African family piling into a Kombi in the famous advertisements.
Those ads featuring David Kramer have been playing on my mind. They’re awkward because they’re from the 1980s, which wasn’t a happy time for most South Africans, but they’re also an indication of how the automotive landscape has changed.
Obviously the cars have changed, but the idea that an ordinary, solidly middle-class family might be able to afford such a thing is no longer the case — a half-decent one costs more than R700,000.
There are a good few reasons for that price. The Kombi is now fully imported as opposed to locally built, which adds to the cost significantly. Since the 1980s, Volkswagen — the brand, not "AG" — has been consolidating itself as a producer of quality family cars thin on luxury fripperies, but heavy on weapons-grade engineering and build quality.
That’s an expensive game, and these days Volkswagen will always have a competitor that will undercut on price, if not quality.
Also, of course, the rand has depreciated considerably against the major currencies since the days of those adverts.
All of which means the new-generation Kombi is priced in at a luxury level, especially when it comes in Caravelle form.
Eagle-eyed readers might remember that about a year ago I reviewed the runout version of the previous ("T5") Caravelle.
I looked back on my experience with that car, which I enjoyed immensely on a long road trip with all three kids, towing a trailer and generally doing the full Kramer.
My conclusion was that, yes, that’s a fine, spacious, reasonably frugal and fun family bus, but these new Caravelle prices are simply too much.
The "T6" latest-generation Caravelle we drove comes in at a hefty R825,000 — the kind of money that’s just about enough to buy a BMW X5, a new Volvo XC90 or a Mercedes E-Class.
These are all serious luxury vehicles and not a van in sight.
...
I CLIMBED up into this latest Caravelle thinking it would probably be rather like the last one, which is to say (at the risk of repeating myself) a fine, spacious, reasonably frugal and fun family bus.
It was certainly all that but, to borrow from Verimark, there’s so much more. The exterior of the Kombi has been tautened and sharpened up.
It’s as though the old car commissioned a suit from a better tailor — it’s instantly recognisable and yet fundamentally smarter.
That familiar face hides a 70% entirely new car. In SA, sadly, the one new bit we won’t be getting is Volkswagen’s shiny new Euro 6-compliant 150kW two-litre diesel. Owing to our increasingly crappy diesel quality, the local Caravelle will have to make do with the old 135kW Euro 4 motor. No matter what the marketers at the oil companies tell you, there’s nothing "low sulphur" about our diesel.
That’s not a tragedy, as 135kW is enough to make the Caravelle more than keep up with the traffic, but it is worth noting that we are now unable to keep up with the best automotive technologies that would reduce our consumption and our emissions of dangerous carcinogenic particulates and gases.
And despite it’s recent travails, this is categorically not Volkswagen’s fault.
The car we drove came with a DSG gearbox — a duel-clutch affair that in the old car was magnificent on the open road and at times jerky and indecisive in town.
I can’t find any material to suggest exactly what they’ve done, but the gearbox seems improved in stop-start traffic, it is less likely to "grab" and feels generally smoother. It’s as brilliant as ever when on the move, selecting gears as quickly as the blink of an eye.
The new Caravelle’s greatest trick, however, is in the ride. Vans-turned-multipurpose-vehicles have, for as long as I’ve been doing this, suffered from the seemingly inevitable side effects of the laws of physics. They’re big boxes and no matter what the car companies seem to do, they flex a bit and have a peculiar resonance when it comes to the acoustics.
The end result has always been rattles and squeaks from the flexing of the vehicle and a headache-inducing "booming" quality to the road noise — and that has applied to big MPVs from Mercedes, Peugeot, Hyundai and Citroën too.
But the latest Benz V-Class and Caravelle have addressed this somehow. The car feels notably stiffer and there’s much less rattling than in the older car. The upshot is an exceptionally refined and quiet ride, with even wind noise (inevitably problematic in a bus with a large frontal area) notably better controlled than in the old car.
Part of that will be a result of the car’s expensive and complex (multilink independent, for the car geeks) rear suspension, which is often a place some manufacturers save a whack of cash by installing a more crude system.
But the result is a truly cosseting and smooth ride and decent roadholding for what is still a van. Inevitably, it rolls around a bit in the corners, but to complain about that seems silly.
...
THE accommodation is a big step up too. The middle two seats can face backwards or forwards and our car came with a fun foldaway table the kids loved.
The rear bench seat can slide around too, which means you can make best use of passenger space or boot space, depending on the journey’s requirements.
Up front, there’s a fully redesigned fascia with incorporated satnav, and a classic van driving position that’s comfortable nonetheless.
Aircon is ducted to all passengers and the people in the back can adjust the temperature.
I had to be impressed. You get a lot more room than in sports utility vehicle and it all seems much more fun, especially for the under-10 demographic in our household, who simply adored their time in the car.
It is unashamedly a victory of function over form, but it is such a good rendition of this idea that one sees great luxury in this effortless competence.
A final thought is this: much of the excellence of the T6 Caravelle is in its basic engineering, not the nice-to-haves such as satnav and so on. That’s why a base-model 75kW manual Kombi, yours for R486,000, is probably a bit of a bargain.
Run through the spec lists to be sure, but a big family eight-seater this well-engineered for this kind of money in this day and age feels like pretty good value. "
