01 Jul 08
The Caravelle also proved to be of great interest to one of my best mates.
Gary - the best man at my wedding - has three children with his partner Justine. One of the things I've learned since becoming a motoring journalist is that you can pretty much have any kind of car if you have two kids, but once you get to three, things can get tricky. Your options suddenly start to narrow rather surprisingly: it's not that you can't get three young children in the back of a Focus, for example, more that you can't get three child seats in there.
My relatively narrow social circle has three sets of parents with three children and, in each case, the arrival of the third child has necessitated a change of car - an E-Class estate with seven seats, Honda FR-V and Ford S-Max being the cars the families have plumped for.
Gary is the E-Class owner - and he's had a bit of a torrid time of it. The car was a few years old when he bought it and it's proved to be something of a money pit, with various problems requiring attention and a not inconsiderable amount of money being spent fixing them. That, and the fact that he's the previous owner of a Type-2, bay-windowed VW Camper, meant that the Caravelle piqued his interest when he came for a visit a few weeks ago.
He and Justine clambered in, sat in the seats, moved a few things around, sat up front, switched on the engine and generally poked and prodded the Caravelle. Judging by the way they looked at each other and smiled, I think Volkswagen are likely to have a new customer in the not-too-distant future.
