LDV Van Test and Thoughts

ei9go

Testing the new LDV Van

We have had an LDV V80 van on test for the past week and thought as its new to the market here, you might be interested in a user test.
The one on test is a long wheelbase medium roof. There are two other flavours available.

LDV vans are made by SAIC in China and imported into Ireland and by the Harris Group.

First impressions are a good looking van with quite a high stance with the rear slightly higher than the front.

Good Points:
Standard A/C, cruise control and reversing sensors. So far so good but now the issues begin to surface.

No RDS radio, now when have you last seen a non RDS radio in anything? We had to tune in Newstalk three times for use in a relatively small area. No stalk or steering controls for the radio either.

No Bluetooth ! A van is a work vehicle and anyone using it is using a phone, seriously. The spec does say Bluetooth but there were no obvious buttons, maybe we missed that so am open to correction there.

No outside temperature gauge. A serious safety omission in my view.
No heated rear windows or rear wipers. You do have heated electric mirrors.

Getting into the cab, you rapidly see that this van was built for persons of a smaller stature than Irish people. The seat for most normal Irish men will be pushed all the way to the back of the cab and I will go so far as to say that anyone with a more portly belly or over 6ft tall will not be able to or want to drive one of these vans.

The speedo and rev counter are in the centre of the console with the speedo closer to the passenger seat which makes accurate speed somewhat problematic. In particular, where 50kph is, is hard to be sure of. Looks like it was built for left hand drive and they never swopped the speedo and rev counter for the right hand drive model.

Now, remember the seat at pushed as far back as it will go, ok. The next issue it that there are no controls on steering wheel and you now cannot reach any of the console mounted controls or the radio without leaning forward. The cruise control button is on the console and is just on and off. When using cruise, I like to keep a finger on the off button on the steering wheel but there is none so you have to either lean forward or touch the clutch or brake pedal to switch it off.

The driver’s seat is terrible; you cannot get a comfortable position no matter how much you play with the adjustments. You sit on it rather than in it. The suspension is very hard and you literally can feel driving over road marking. On country road bends there is significant body roll when pushing on a bit and presumably this is why the suspension is so stiff. It’s fine on main roads.
In use, there is a downward angle from the back to the front so any loose items tend to come forward and the load height at the back is very high which makes lifting anything heavy into very difficult.

Visibility is good but the magnification on the inside rear view mirror makes it difficult to tell where you are when reversing. The reversing sensor beep is very low in volume and also doesn’t reduce the radio volume. You within inches of something before the sound goes solid.

Writing this thinking of comparisons between Ford Transits, Renault Masters etc and really there is no comparison. The big brands are in a different league to the LDV.

Conclusion. Think long and hard before you buy one of these. You do get what you pay for.

mickdw

So you liked it then.

Haha. Lots of unhappy postmen coming down the road so

Atlantic Dawn

No bluetooth and external temperature gauge are crazy omissions in a work vehicle.

goochy

Pino Harris will find you !!

kirving

http://www.ancap.com.au/safety-ratings/ldv/v80

Worth noting that it also did rubbish in crash tests.

JohnBoy26

Atlantic Dawn wrote: »

No bluetooth and external temperature gauge are crazy omissions in a work vehicle.

What ever about the outside tempeture gauge bluetooth is definitely a glaring omission.

enumbers

nicely written review, there cheap so we will see plenty of them on the road unfortunately

Guy:Incognito

ei9go wrote: »

No RDS radio, now when have you last seen a non RDS radio in anything? We had to tune in Newstalk three times for use in a relatively small area. No stalk or steering controls for the radio either.
.

This seems to be a Chinese thing. You can buy genuine VW radios that have been taken out of brand new cars and upgraded at dealer stage before delivery from China and they dont have RDS.

colm_mcm

They don't have RDS in China.

Toyotafanboi

Sounds like if it had bluetooth and RDS you would have been ok with it, you could retrofit both for <€300.

Long wheel base, mid roof comes in at €6000 cheaper than a comparable transit.

Bit cramped, not the most ergonomic interior, what were you expecting from probably the cheapest full size van on the market?

ei9go

Toyotafanboi wrote: »

Sounds like if it had bluetooth and RDS you would have been ok with it, you could retrofit both for <€300.

Long wheel base, mid roof comes in at €6000 cheaper than a comparable transit.

Bit cramped, not the most ergonomic interior, what were you expecting from probably the cheapest full size van on the market?

Sorry if I gave the impression that I would be OK with this van if it had an RDS radio and Bluetooth.

I did say in conclusion that you get what you pay for.

gctest50

Toyotafanboi wrote: »

............
Bit cramped, not the most ergonomic interior, what were you expecting from probably the cheapest full size van on the market?

That's what gets me, surely wouldn't be that expensive to :

make it just a little bit bigger ( just a bit more steel n plastic like )

and lay it out a bit better ( it has seats, clocks anyway, put them somewhere remotely related to a humans shape )

These look less sh!te :

colm_mcm

That's basically an mpv turned into a van though.
Seems similarly sized to a transit custom.

I get the impression that the Ldv vans will probably do well in China, Russia etc, which are massive markets compared to Europe.
I'm just guessing, but they're probably making a nice margin on them in Europe in comparison.