To be honest I think Enterprise have Transits too but Thrifty's hire costs were way less this time. Weirdly Enterprise wanted £350 or so to hire it from Thursday evening until Saturday morning, or about £200 from Thursday evening until Monday morning. Thrifty were £190 for the shorter hire and I had no great desire to have a van blocking the drive for two extra days and then get up early on Monday to return it before work. Turned out Thrifty's depot is closer too. I'll use them in future.
I booked a big van just in case we needed the space; turned out that we did because my dad's request to help him move a bed and a desk turned out to be moving a sofa as well, plus all his other furniture and possessions from his second home down to his main home in Hampshire. And that was the point at which I realised the unexpected feature of this particular Transit was a bit of a hindrance:
Yes, it has 4wd. Which means a higher floor and quite a bit less space than the Citroen Relay I had last time, as well as being more awkward to load. Damn. I also fell out of it once because I was stepping backwards and about 6" higher than I thought, plus I twisted my ankle stepping down from the back. Looking at other high-roof Transits on the road on Friday I realised that it was probably not far off a standard Transit in cargo size but at least had a couple of extra inches' interior height over a standard one so I didn't need to stoop when standing in the back. But if you do hire one, watch out for this version not being as accommodating as you'd expect.
Anyway, this is supposed to be a review. What's it like? Way, way nicer than the Citroen to drive, very easy and intuitive controls for things like the lights, stereo, phone pairing etc - a Ford trait which I appreciated. But it was incredibly sparsely equipped: no auto lights or wipers, no proper screen on the stereo so no Carplay nor built-in sat nav (had to prop my phone in the cupholder on the dash for Google Maps to get the traffic, which saved me a 20 minute delay that my dad encountered), no parking sensors even on the rear, no heated screen (it was frosty on Friday morning at 6.30am so I had to wait for it to warm up because I couldn't reach to scrape the ice off). It did have air-con, central locking and electric windows, but realistically I think you need a screen for Carplay/Android Auto and rear parking sensors in a hire van. I'd also have liked cruise control when sitting on the M40. Being 4wd it did have a couple of traction related modes but I didn't try them.
To drive though it was great fun. The dash-mounted gearshift was sufficiently enjoyable that I changed gear for the pleasure of it, not just because I had to. It didn't roll excessively, damping was pretty darned good both empty and laden, it was plenty quick enough - again, even laden when it would maintain speed happily in 6th up hills and even accelerate pretty smartly from 65-85mph without changing down on the flat. If you have to drive a van for work then I'd definitely want one of these, with a few options, over the Citroen.
The two negatives are related: refinement at higher speed isn't as good as you might hope because 6th gear is too low (about 2,600rpm at 70mph - I did try to change into 7th at one point in case they'd simply missed it off the logo on the gearknob but no, it only has 6 forward gears). And economy isn't great when sitting at 70-75mph; overall I did 30.4mpg according to the computer across 320 miles which included quite a lot of non-motorway. A higher top gear ratio would improve both refinement and economy.
Overall, Transit = good, still the standard against which to judge others I'd say. I had fund chucking it round some roundabouts on the way to drop it off yesterday morning. Oh, and you may have heard about a design flaw in the dash storage which breaks mobile phones - well, they've tried to solve it with a label. See for yourself - idiotic:
