Volkswagen California review

This won’t be your usual interior section of a car review. Think Top Gear meets Grand Designs.

We’ll kick off with the bits that we’re used to. Up front things are almost exactly as they are in the passenger Multivan, so you get two very comfortable heated captain’s chairs clad in recycled fabric (they can spin around once you’re stopped to create a proper living room too), a steering wheel covered in proper buttons, mostly beige trim, a 10.25-inch digital dial display and the option of a head-up display.

Unfortunately, you also have to have the 10-inch touchscreen from the pre-facelift Mk8 Volkswagen Golf, so while that car has now moved on with an updated screen, the California is stuck with slow load times, needlessly complex menu systems and unlit sliders to control the cabin temperature and radio volume. It’s a massive own goal from VW, especially now we’ve experienced its updated system in things like the facelifted Golf.

Tell me about the bed situation…

We’re talking Ocean spec here remember; we’ll outline exactly what you get in the other trims over on the Buying tab. So, in the full flagship Cali you get four individual seats, although you can remove the rears for more space and VW is proud that they now only weigh 24kg each. In the past a rear bench would have been upwards of 80kg and owners would never remove it even if they were inclined to.

You also get two beds so there’s sleeping space for four people. The first is of course in the pop-up roof, while the second double lives in the boot space and folds forward over the seats. It’s easy enough to set up and pack away once you’ve got used to how the manual seats slide and fold. We’ve tried the bed up top and although the mattress is fairly thin it’s sprung underneath and very comfortable.

What else is there?

All Oceans get a full kitchenette down the left-hand side of the cabin, although because both sides now feature a sliding door there’s no full wall to stick everything to. Instead, you get a very neat little aluminium unit that houses a large fridge drawer, a single gas hob and a small sink. The water and gas tanks sit underneath the unit and it’s all very space efficient.

It’s also very well thought out. For example, the fridge can be accessed directly from the side door so that there’s no need to clamber inside with your shopping. There’s even a fold out table that can be attached to all different sides of the unit. Outdoor veg chopping, anyone?

Two 40Ah LiFePo leisure batteries provide plenty of power for a few nights of off-grid living and can be charged via the engine, while all Californias get a new touchscreen control unit in the C pillar that looks after things like the interior lighting and fridge operations. It’s not the most responsive touchscreen though (worse than the infotainment) and you can set up a phone app to control the same functions so you probably wouldn’t use it all that often.

How’s the storage?

Although the second bed splits the boot space you still get plenty of storage both underneath and on top. VW quotes 4,005 litres of total luggage space and there’s easily enough room for four suitcases and a load of camping paraphernalia, particularly if you slide the rear seats forward. Legroom is not an issue.

The classic California camping chairs are still housed in the boot door but we’re told that they now have a higher backrest so are more comfortable. The fold-out table has moved from said door to sit underneath the second bed in the boot.

Up front there’s no more manual handbrake and no central console (handy for walking through to the back of the van) but you do get some fold out cupholders plus two gloveboxes and useful little drawers under the seats. In the rear there’s a huge number of cupboards and drawers to lose things in.

Any neat features I really should know about?

Volkswagen has been in this game for a long time, so honestly there’s too many to mention. A few stand outs? A ‘camping mode’ switches off all of the exterior lighting so that you don’t light up the campsite when nature calls in the middle of the night. There’s an outdoor shower option too that connects to an outlet in the boot, plus once you’ve popped the roof (electronically on higher specs) you can then push the bed up to give you up to 2.1m of headroom inside. There are roller blinds on the rear windows and magnetic covers for the fronts and the windscreen. Oh, and there are USB-C sockets literally everywhere.

Here’s a neat trick too: if you double tap any of the light switches then all of the interior lights switch off at once, so no need to climb back down out of bed if you left one light on downstairs.