Volkswagen ID.Buzz - long-term review

Don’t tell Ferrari/Bentley/Rolls customers forking out tens of thousands for carbon-fibre umbrellas and extra-leathery gloveboxes, but time is luxury apparently, not expensive stuff. Rubbish, I say, for I have lived seven glorious months with the extended-wheelbase ID. Buzz and can confirm luxury is in fact… space.

It buys you everything. The ability to make plans on the fly and take vast numbers of family and friends with you. It lets you rid the house of unsightly cardboard boxes and piles of garden waste when you’ve got guests on the way – simply lob them in the skip-on-wheels parked outside. It saves you the stress of deciding what’s worth packing and what’s not, thus avoiding roughly six domestics per annum.

Usually space comes with compromise. Buy a traditional van and it’s not particularly wieldy for popping to the shops in, or dropping the kids at school. But the Buzz counters that by being electric, fast, responsive and highly manoeuvrable. So you end up using it, as I did, for everything from solo shuttle runs to the gym, to family holidays in France.

It’s the car every videographer and photographer wants on a photo shoot – huge slab-like front and rear surfaces to mount cameras on, sliding side doors to hang out of for the hero low-profile angle, and it swallows everything - people and kit – and stands a chance of keeping up with some of the fruitier stuff we shoot.

It’s got character – the kids love it and our neighbours smile and wave, assuming we’re off on some adventure when really we’re off to collect fish and chips. Even the roundly despised VW infotainment system wasn’t an issue, given it connected immediately to CarPlay and that’s all I ever use – although moving or tilting the screen towards the driver wouldn’t go amiss.

I loved the heated wheel and seats, twin armrests in the front, high seating position and view out, 360 cameras and stubby front overhang so you can squeeze right up into parking spaces with confidence.

Issues? It’s a lot of money for what feels like a well-kitted, but straightforward car. You’re paying for personality in other words, a fact that’s only highlighted by the shockingly cheap Kia PV5 arriving on the scene. Range is a learning curve. VW claims 280-miles, and that’s plenty for bombing about locally, and my West Sussex to West London commute (with a third of the battery to spare). But the efficiency drop off at motorway speeds is stark – you can thank the laws of aerodynamics for that – which means if you’re on a road trip and don’t want to drive at 65mph in the crawler lane, budget to stop every 150-miles for a top up.

Put simply, the Buzz is my kind of car (since I’ve had two kids anyway) – unflinchingly practical, but with something about it. I’ve never run dry of things to talk about, it’s risen to every challenge and become a solid sixth member of the family (we have a cat – Bluey, we like to keep our pets on BBC brand). Handing this one back is going to sting… anyone got Kia’s number?