Volkswagen Caddy interior, tech and comfort
- Car-like dashboard
- Fiddly infotainment
- Heating/cooling on touchscreen
How is the quality and layout?
The Caddy uses a lot of the same technology as the VW Golf. This means you generally get the quality level of a car and there aren’t really any nasty looking or feeling bits of plastics; the design and layout are as up-to-date as we’ve come to expect from a VW Group product. It’s very much a case of the car variant leading the van variant in this latest Caddy – the inside doesn’t feel much like a commercial vehicle at all.
As with the Golf, this does come with some drawbacks. For example, there aren’t any traditional controls for the air-conditioning system. Instead, this is controlled via the central infotainment touchscreen. This is very modern and helps keep the cabin design neat, but in practice it can be very frustrating, even after lengthy periods of use.
Infotainment and tech
There are some poor-relation issues to overcome in the tech department. The basic 6.25-inch touchscreen fitted in the entry-level Caddy doesn’t even allow you to sync your phone. The 8.25-inch version in the Caddy Life does come with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, as part of VW’s own App Connect system, but you have to upgrade this to the optional 10.0-inch version if you want built-in satellite-navigation. The base model can have a 10.0-inch screen at extra cost but no factory satnav.
VW’s infotainment software looks good, and is relatively easy to get to grips with but is still rather buggy. We’ve lost count of the number of test cars that have given us issues, and although these are usually minor problems we don’t feel a brand like Volkswagen should be having trouble with this at all.
The Caddy Life also comes with a digital instrument cluster, which is again nice to look at (and can be customised to suit driver preferences), but we don’t feel you’re losing out very much here if you stick with the conventional dials.
Comfort
- High (van-like) seating position
- Plenty of support
- Good levels of adjustment
The high seating position in the Caddy means you get a good view of the road ahead, which we feel is much more appropriate for this kind of vehicle than a ground-skimming, seat of the pants experience. The steering wheel and the front seats adjust enough to make it easy for lots of different sizes of driver to get comfortable behind the wheel, but only the Caddy Life gets variable lumbar support.
The front and second row seats are well proportioned and comfortable. There is a transmission tunnel down the middle, though, so legroom for the middle seat passenger isn’t as generous as it is for those on either side, and the headrest isn’t as substantial, either.
The third row seats are slender chairs, with reduced support and much more limited legroom. Kids that don’t require child seats should be okay back there, but we wouldn’t want to cram in larger adults unless it was unavoidable.
The Caddy’s cavernous interior is well damped by all the fixtures and fittings, so it’s not too noisy inside. But this is one area where you will notice the difference to a more conventional – and likely quieter – family car. The diesel engines in particular are more obviously vocal in here, and some van-derived rivals offer better refinement.
