Borris
Super Poster
VIP Member
Having joined the forum in July, my wife Paddy and I eventually collected our ex demonstrator T5 Cali on the 1st October after a long three month wait. Margot is a pearl black 180SE dsg 4motion with leather, stainless side pipes and sportline front spoiler. In fact the dealer had specified almost everything that we had on our extensive options wish list and some. We added a few more. This is superb except for the payload weight issue discussed elsewhere on this forum.
Since collecting her we have had a few picnics and a couple of nights away. The last of which was the recent and excellent Cali meet at Tewksbury. However I have been waiting until after our recent five day long extended shake down test to our favourite UK locations before doing a proper review. We have just returned to find the garage flooded, the power off and the contents of the freezer gone west. But thats another story.
During our tour, we spent our first night camping on a wide grass verge in a quiet country lane that turned out to be half a mile from the A1(M). Bloody noisy! On this occasion, we slept upstairs for the first time and found the bed to be rather on the hard side.
The second night found us on a very nice Caravan Club site in Wharfdale. After I had spend an hour faffing around moving the van to different outlet points trying to get the electrical hook up to work, with caravan curtains twitching, a kindly fellow camper told me to twist the plug in the power outlet. Doooh! Problem solved. We slept up stairs again and this time had a good nights sleep. However we have since decided that for people like us (who are very nearly over the hill), it presents too many issues. The main being the middle of the night tinkle! We have therefore decided to reserve the upper deck for the occasional grandchild or two and sleep downstairs in future. Perhaps VW could equip the T7 with one of those tubes that RAF bombers had for the use of crosslegged aircrew on long sorties! And no I don't remember them, I am not that old.
The third night was spent at another CC site on the banks of Coniston Water during "Speed Week", (People in power boats hammering up and down the water from 08.30 in the morning). It was a very large wooded site and the facilities were quite superb. Slept downstairs on the VW Comfort matress, topped by 50mm of self inflating mattress and a Zonesleep with a 10.5 tog duvet. It was extremely comfortable. Bliss!
During our break we quickly found out what you all probably aleady know, that having a routine is the key to successful Cali life. Get every thing out that you need before your meal otherwise you are in and out like a fiddlers elbow getting stuff out that you had forgotten. Our night time routine is for my wife to go off for a shower whilst I stow things away and make up the bed. When she return I then hop off for my ablutions. It seems to work well enough for us.
Our forth and fifth nights were spent at Backpool (had chish and fips, rode the trams and saw the lights) and at a very quiet CC site way out in the sticks not far from Ludlow. Both nights were very cosy. We found ourselves at the Lode Inn again for Sunday lunch for the second Sunday in a row.
During the entire five days away it only stopped raining for about five minutes and for a lot of the time it was torrential. The driving conditions were often atrocious with heavy surface water with poor light and visibility. We drove on motorways at a constant 56 mph on the way up to test max mpg and on other M roads at 70+ mph to test performance and handling. We tackled a range of single track roads, B roads and tackled the Wrynose and Hardknot passes. Our tour took us from Canterbury through the Yorkshire Dales, lake district, Blackpool, the Snowdonia National Park and home via Shropshire, Herefordshire etc. Through out this test Margot performed faultlessly. With the minor exception of a little minor wallowing at times on the motorway, (probably cross wind), at no time did I think that this van could be improved to any great degree. This vehicle is quite simply superb.
Its a smooth, quiet, refined, well made and an extremely versatile tool. The mpg figures turned out to be astounding. Cruising on the motorway at 56mph in a fully loaded three tonne, brick shaped, four wheel drive van we achieved well over 40mpg. This figure was from the lower brim to brim test. The computor reading turned out to be about 2 - 2.5 mpg higher.
Living and sleeping in her was also superb. Yes a Cali is compact but with our rountine we didn't experience any issues at all. It was a very comfortable experience especially lying in bed, all cosy and warm listening to the rain hammering on the outside. The heater is a wonderful feature but we were so cosy that it didn't get switched on much at all. We even used the DVD player function on the RNS 510.
As for possible improvements, the only thing that we could think of is to have the blind in the sliding door and not the body.
Faults to date :
One of the four rubber bumper grommets that support the leading edge of the bonnet has come adrift. Shock horror!
The rear fog symbol on the main lighting switch doesn't light up when the rear fog is on. Not sure if it is surposed to.
So have we done the right think in buying a T5 Cali SE?
Yes Yes Yes should have done it earlier. We can't wait to clean her up and get out on the road again.
Since collecting her we have had a few picnics and a couple of nights away. The last of which was the recent and excellent Cali meet at Tewksbury. However I have been waiting until after our recent five day long extended shake down test to our favourite UK locations before doing a proper review. We have just returned to find the garage flooded, the power off and the contents of the freezer gone west. But thats another story.
During our tour, we spent our first night camping on a wide grass verge in a quiet country lane that turned out to be half a mile from the A1(M). Bloody noisy! On this occasion, we slept upstairs for the first time and found the bed to be rather on the hard side.
The second night found us on a very nice Caravan Club site in Wharfdale. After I had spend an hour faffing around moving the van to different outlet points trying to get the electrical hook up to work, with caravan curtains twitching, a kindly fellow camper told me to twist the plug in the power outlet. Doooh! Problem solved. We slept up stairs again and this time had a good nights sleep. However we have since decided that for people like us (who are very nearly over the hill), it presents too many issues. The main being the middle of the night tinkle! We have therefore decided to reserve the upper deck for the occasional grandchild or two and sleep downstairs in future. Perhaps VW could equip the T7 with one of those tubes that RAF bombers had for the use of crosslegged aircrew on long sorties! And no I don't remember them, I am not that old.
The third night was spent at another CC site on the banks of Coniston Water during "Speed Week", (People in power boats hammering up and down the water from 08.30 in the morning). It was a very large wooded site and the facilities were quite superb. Slept downstairs on the VW Comfort matress, topped by 50mm of self inflating mattress and a Zonesleep with a 10.5 tog duvet. It was extremely comfortable. Bliss!
During our break we quickly found out what you all probably aleady know, that having a routine is the key to successful Cali life. Get every thing out that you need before your meal otherwise you are in and out like a fiddlers elbow getting stuff out that you had forgotten. Our night time routine is for my wife to go off for a shower whilst I stow things away and make up the bed. When she return I then hop off for my ablutions. It seems to work well enough for us.
Our forth and fifth nights were spent at Backpool (had chish and fips, rode the trams and saw the lights) and at a very quiet CC site way out in the sticks not far from Ludlow. Both nights were very cosy. We found ourselves at the Lode Inn again for Sunday lunch for the second Sunday in a row.
During the entire five days away it only stopped raining for about five minutes and for a lot of the time it was torrential. The driving conditions were often atrocious with heavy surface water with poor light and visibility. We drove on motorways at a constant 56 mph on the way up to test max mpg and on other M roads at 70+ mph to test performance and handling. We tackled a range of single track roads, B roads and tackled the Wrynose and Hardknot passes. Our tour took us from Canterbury through the Yorkshire Dales, lake district, Blackpool, the Snowdonia National Park and home via Shropshire, Herefordshire etc. Through out this test Margot performed faultlessly. With the minor exception of a little minor wallowing at times on the motorway, (probably cross wind), at no time did I think that this van could be improved to any great degree. This vehicle is quite simply superb.
Its a smooth, quiet, refined, well made and an extremely versatile tool. The mpg figures turned out to be astounding. Cruising on the motorway at 56mph in a fully loaded three tonne, brick shaped, four wheel drive van we achieved well over 40mpg. This figure was from the lower brim to brim test. The computor reading turned out to be about 2 - 2.5 mpg higher.
Living and sleeping in her was also superb. Yes a Cali is compact but with our rountine we didn't experience any issues at all. It was a very comfortable experience especially lying in bed, all cosy and warm listening to the rain hammering on the outside. The heater is a wonderful feature but we were so cosy that it didn't get switched on much at all. We even used the DVD player function on the RNS 510.
As for possible improvements, the only thing that we could think of is to have the blind in the sliding door and not the body.
Faults to date :
One of the four rubber bumper grommets that support the leading edge of the bonnet has come adrift. Shock horror!
The rear fog symbol on the main lighting switch doesn't light up when the rear fog is on. Not sure if it is surposed to.
So have we done the right think in buying a T5 Cali SE?
Yes Yes Yes should have done it earlier. We can't wait to clean her up and get out on the road again.
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