Volkswagen Crafter vs Iveco Daily

What's the difference?

This is not the vehicle for somebody looking for the odd weekend away. That’s mainly because it will take up a lot of real estate when you’re not using it (it may not even fit in a lot of car-ports or garages) and it’s far from a daily driver for the school run or shopping trips.

If you’re looking for a getaway machine that will also work at home for the other 48 weeks of the year, a conventional caravan and four-wheel-drive is likely to be a better bet, purely because the tow-vehicle can be your day-to-day transport

But if your plans include longer getaways and you have the storage space to keep the Kampervan stashed away safely, it starts to emerge as a functional alternative.

Talk to long-term travellers, and even the best camper trailer needs to be set up each night and folded away next morning, and as for tents, don’t even start us…

But like a full-sized caravan, the VW simply pulls up to where ever it is you want to stay for the night and is ready to feed, entertain and rest its occupants within seconds of stopping.

But unlike a big, heavy caravan, the Volkswagen imposes far fewer driving caveats (including fuel consumption) and is a vastly more enjoyable and simple thing to drive in pretty much any circumstance.

It's not for everybody, but for those whose lifestyle it matches, the VW Kampervan is an alternative to a caravan that deserves short-listing. Let’s face it, 50 million hippies can’t be wrong.

Note: CarsGuide attended this event as a guest of the manufacturer, with accommodation and meals provided.

The Iveco Daily van’s light-truck genetics mean it’s not as immediately familiar to the end-user as some of the competition. It’s a fair climb to get inside, for instance, and once you’re there, the cabin lacks the ambience of a more passenger-oriented machine. Its wheelbase and external dimensions, too, mean it requires plenty of parking skill and real estate, and the dynamics are surefooted but hardly athletic.

Of course, fleet managers won’t care too much about any of that, and the flip-side is those truck underpinnings point to a low maintenance, high-mileage lifespan with good warranty as a promise of less time lost in the service bay when the van could be on the road earning its keep.

Right at the moment, the Daily van appears to be forming some kind of bridge between the car and truck world in terms of safety equipment and driver assistance gear, too. And that’s got to be a good thing.

But equally, it remains a pretty specialised piece of equipment that won’t work for everybody, nor does it have a lot of cross-over appeal between the car and truck worlds. None of which, of course, will prevent it being a valuable tool of the trade in the right hands.

Note: CarsGuide attended this event as a guest of the manufacturer, with travel, accommodation and meals provided.

Given that the design of the camper conversion was partly the work of Jayco, there’s every reason to suspect that the end result should work for recreational users. That is, of course, provided Jayco’s caravan-building experience translates to a campervan layout.

That’s because this is not as simple as plonking a wheel-less caravan onto a Crafter cab-chassis; integration in the key here.

The various zones – driving, entertaining, sleeping, bathroom and cooking – need to work with each other with as many components having more than one job.

The off-grid capability is also a highlight and, in the case of the All-Terrain model with its off-road tyres, bash plates and 30mm higher ground clearance, makes getting farther off the beaten track more of a reality.

A lot of people will wonder why VW didn’t simply import a batch of the campervan conversions it already builds in Europe.

The fact is, however, that the left-hand drive layout means the sliding side door would be on the wrong side for Australia, and the integrated gas system would not have met ADR standards. So was born the idea of a local conversions which is where Jayco came in.

One thing Iveco is very up front about is that its vans are truck-based. To some sectors of the market this is no problem whatsoever, but it means that stylistically, the end product is not likely to be as fashionable looking as some of the competition. That big, bluff front, for instance, while maybe looking a bit heavy-handed to some, will conjure up just the right amount of brute force for others.

There is also evidence Iveco doesn’t mind if the exterior appearance fails to hide how the machine works. That perhaps why the wheel arch flares are obvious and the track for the sliding door is proudly on display rather than hidden.

Even inside, the bare cargo-bay walls tell their own utilitarian story, but when you get down to actually lashing down heavy loads, that truck heritage is very much in evidence with a non-nonsense layout and presentation.

The Crafter’s phone mirroring system seems to work pretty well, although it’s menu-driven layout can be a bit frustrating (it’s hardly alone there) and Android phones sometimes didn’t want to connect as simply as they should have (potential user-error here, folks).

But the rest of the interior is typically Crafter-smart including lots and lots of cupholders, USB ports and cubby-holes dotted around the front seat area.

Doubtless, a few months on the road will show up design issues according to the individual, but for now, our main comment would be the proximity of the bathroom to the food preparation area (although, to be fair, most owners will cook outside the vehicle).

The mattress is a split queen unit (rather than a single mattress) and it occupies the full width of the rearmost part of the vehicle, so making the bed might be a bit more difficult.

The location and width of the bathroom (although it feels pretty tiny once you’re in there and operates as a wet-room) also means there’s just half the rear view that the vehicle might otherwise have.

The thick pillar between the two rear barn-doors also adds to that blind spot. At least the mirrors are good; nice and wide and very clear.

It’s when the Kampervan is not being used to survey this wide, brown land that its practicality starts to come into question. Unlike a conventional four-wheel drive and caravan rig, the accommodation section of the Crafter can’t simply be unhooked and parked in the driveway.

Which means it’s not really suburb or city-friendly. Underground car-parks will soon detach the air-conditioning unit in a pretty violent way, and the almost-seven-metre length will have you looking for adjacent empty parking spaces (or the car-and-trailer section at Bunnings).

Put simply, this is the touring solution for those who want to tackle the Big Trip in one go, staying on the road for weeks or perhaps even months. Obviously, that’s an observation rather than a criticism, but it remains something to think about.

Even within the framework of vans that are agile enough to park relatively simply, can be driven on a normal car license and are priced within reach of even recreational users, there’s still a lot going on. Think optional payloads, wheelbases and cargo volumes, just for starters.

So let’s start with the Daily 42S. Available with either a 3520mm or 4100mm wheelbase, the 42S can cope with a payload of 1872kg or 1741kg, respectively. Towing capacity is 3500kg. It stands more than 2.7 metres tall and seats three.

The 50C is the next step up the size ladder and, like the 42S, can be had with either a 3520mm or 4100mm wheelbase. But from there, the 50C just gets bigger with a choice of three overall lengths (up to almost 7.7 metres) and two distinct roof heights. Payload varies from a high of 1942kg to 1752kg and, like the 42S it also seats three and can tow 3500kg.

Iveco has stuck with single rear wheels (rather than a dual-wheel rear axle) for the 42S variant as this minimises the internal space taken up by the rear wheel arches and ensures that the van in any configuration will still swallow a standard pallet between those arches. The 50C, meanwhile, with its greater payload potential, features dual rear wheels. The other reason for the dual wheels is that the 50C can be ordered with an upscaled GVM of 5.2 tonnes, versus the standard vehicle’s 4.5 tonnes. At that point, though, the driver requires an endorsed license to stay legal.

The cabin is a master-class in finding a storage space for everything, with no less than three cubbies per door, storage bins on the dash-top and above the sun-visors, half a dozen cubbies in the dash fascia, a single glove box and a huge storage area under the flip-up cushions of the passenger’s bench seat. In standard trim, the Iveco vans seat three with a two-person bench and a single driver’s seat. That, however, doesn’t mean the vehicle has a walk-through function, and the solid cargo barrier keeps the cabin permanently separate from the cargo bay.

Access to the cargo area is via twin barn doors at the rear which open back on to the sides of the vehicle for easier fork-lift loading. There’s a single sliding side door as standard on the kerb-side, but you can option a second sliding door on the other side. There are also no less than 10 tie-down points (five per side) and they’re solid and mounted on the floor for maximum usefulness. Three LED lights illuminate the cargo area.

When you start to dig into the Iveco Daily range, it soon becomes apparent there’s huge depth to the line-up. In fact, there’s everything from a four-wheel drive dual cab-chassis, a bare-bones cab-chassis and even van versions with enough GVM (Gross Vehicle Mass) to require a truck license to be driven legally.

But for most users, and certainly those that might otherwise resort to an American pick-up or some other form of dual-cab utility for their work and play requirements, the Daily variants that offer the broadest appeal are the 42S and 50C vans.

That pair gives you a choice of capacities (see Practicality section) as well as some new safety tech and some structural changes aimed at making the vehicle safer.

You also get climate-control air-conditioning, cruise-control and a tilt and height adjustable steering column. Seat trim is still cloth, the floor coverings remain vinyl and the wheels are stamped from steel. This is, after all, a truck-based vehicle and it shows in some respects.

A pair of option-packs start with the 'Business Pack' which takes fuel capacity from 70 litres to 100 litres, a new 10-inch multi-media unit, a passenger’s bench seat with table, a heated driver’s seat with suspension function, climate-control, keyless entry and go, fog-lights and an electronic park-brake.

The 'Premium Pack' adds auto headlights and wipers, LED lighting, a leather steering wheel, wireless charging, adaptive cruise-control and lane-centring.

Right at the moment, we don’t have pricing for those packs, nor do we, in fact, have confirmation of pricing for the new van range. But word on the street is that pricing – thanks to a strong exchange rate at the moment – may not be very different from the superseded range, meaning the entry-level 42S van could enter the market around the $60,000 mark plus on-road costs, while the 50C variant could top out at closer to $100,000. That’s a pretty sketchy prediction, we know, but it’s all we can offer at the moment.

The Crafter is powered by VW’s now-familiar 2.0-litre turbo-diesel four-cylinder engine which produces 130kW of power and 410Nm of torque thanks to a pair of turbochargers.

Driving through an eight-speed automatic transmission, the torque is then sent to all four wheels via VW’s '4Motion' permanent all-wheel-drive system.

It’s worth mentioning the automatic transmission is a conventional torque-converter unit, rather that the dual-clutch layout VW has championed for years now.

The Crafter also uses ventilated disc brakes front and rear and the however you look at it, the modern driveline of the Kampervan makes an old air-cooled Kombi look even more antiquated (which is saying something).

And while the Crafter in commercial-vehicle trim has the option of an electronic locking rear differential, the Kampervan adds this as standard.

While vans might be getting ever closer to passenger cars in the way they drive (stay with us) in engineering terms, there’s still a bit of 'us and them' going on. That means you kind of have to throw away a fair bit of what you thought you knew about how motor vehicles work, but it also means the Iveco is fit for purpose in a world where big loads and lots of kilometres are the norm.

Power in either the 42S or the 50C comes from a 3.0-litre, four-cylinder, turbo-diesel engine. It doesn’t sound too different from what you’d find in a dual-cab ute, but the engine uses some pretty heavy-duty tech, making it closer to a truck engine than a typical light commercial’s, including an impressive service regime. Although capacity remains the same, the Iveco’s unit is available in two tunes, both erring on the side of torque over outright power.

The 42S gets a 132kW and 430Nm version of the engine, while the 50C can be optioned up to the second-tier tune with 155kW and 470Nm. It’s not just an electronic tweak, either, and while the engine’s fundamentals remain, there are changes to the turbocharger and camshaft as well as the engine management.

Standard transmission is a ZF-made eight-speed conventional automatic and there’s electric power-steering as a nod to the chase for maximum efficiency which is perhaps even more important in the Daily’s European home market than it might sometimes be here.

However, it’s when you get to the suspension that the Daily reveals its brawny design ethos. Front suspension on the 42S is by double wishbones and torsion bars which sounds odd, but is pretty familiar in the trucking world. The 50C uses the same arrangement.

At the rear, the 42S gets a simple twin-leaf parabolic spring at each outer end of the axle, while the 50C has the same with optional air suspension and an optional driver-controlled locking differential.

All versions of the Daily also use the time-honoured (in the trucking industry) body-on-ladder-chassis construction method.

Although the Crafter’s driveline boasts energy recuperation, it’s not a hybrid system. Instead, the vehicle’s alternator is able to generate electricity during braking and store that in the vehicle’s batteries for later use, rather than storing that power in a dedicated hybrid battery.

This also helps ensure the main battery is always fully charged to power the stop-start system that is also standard on the Crafter.

Because it’s a commercial vehicle, there’s no compulsion to offer an official fuel consumption figure and, indeed, Volkswagen doesn’t.

But our real world drive including some winding roads and a bit of freeway thrown in, gave us an average figure of between nine and 10 litres per 100km. This is likely to be a bit lower on a purely highway run, but is a good indicator of general use consumption.

The 75 litre fuel tank should, then, give an easy 700km of range, but don’t forget the Crafter’s engine uses AdBlue, so that extra cost needs to be factored into running costs.

Fuel consumption of commercial vehicles can vary enormously depending on where they’re driven and how they’re used and loaded. As a commercial vehicle, there are no official fuel consumption claims made by Iveco according to any standard test procedure.

Our experience with this vehicle in the past, however, suggests that between nine and 10 litres per 100km is a good indication of overall consumption. Obviously, hitching a 3.5-tonne trailer to the vehicle and loading it fully will have a big effect on that number.

With the standard 70-litre tank, the Daily should be able to cover near enough to 700km between fills, while the optional 100 tank should take it closer to 1000km.

Don’t forget, either, that the new Daily requires AdBlue which is carried in a 20-litre reservoir on the vehicle, and that the cost of filling this needs to be added to overall running costs.

You can see the appeal of a high driving position the moment you step into (or climb into, really) the Kampervan. The view out is fabulous and even though the vehicle is just shy of seven metres long, you soon develop a bit of a sixth sense for where the back wheels are, based on what the front wheels have just done.

The glass area is huge with the exception of the view to the rear thanks to that bathroom placement.

The front seats are big and comfy, although the two rear seats are pretty flat and place the occupants quite close together. There’s enough adjustability in the seat and steering column to make anybody feel at home and the exterior mirrors are big and clear.

There’s enough performance, to be sure, but the sheer mass of the Kampervan and the fact that it’s moving a lot of air means you’ll be giving the rather long-travel accelerator a decent workout.

Taking off into traffic is the only time the VW will feel a bit sluggish, but once the engine has a few revs on board it all gets going fairly smartly.

Unlike a lot of modern cars that can feel as though they're travelling a lot slower than they really are, the Kampervan is the opposite. Not that it’s spooky to drive, but there will be times you’ll be in a 100km/h zone, look down and discover you’re doing 90.

In the context of a leisure vehicle, this shouldn’t bother anybody apart from a highway patrol officer down on his or her monthly quota.

The engine is smooth and the transmission is refined and possesses enough smarts to make a better job of shifting itself than the driver ever will.

It’s not exactly silent inside, though, with a smattering of clicks and clatters from some of the less-automotive furniture, but it’s a fair bet even a brand-new house would likewise rattle a bit if you hurled it down a bumpy road at 100km/h.

The biggest source of noise pollution, though, is in the All-Terrain model and consists of a chorus of sucking, sobbing, choking and burping noises from the snorkel which is placed right near the driver’s right ear. Obviously, it’s worse with the window open.

Ride quality is very good. Clearly, having a bit of weight on board doesn’t hurt, but even so, the Kampervan refuses to pitch or wallow despite that ride compliance. In fact, it’s very composed for such a big unit that was originally designed to carry parcels and pallets.

The first impression – once you’ve managed to climb inside the cabin (a manoeuvre that requires the in-built step) is of a magnificent view ahead and to the sides. You sit high and mighty and the vast glass area means you always feel like the king of the road. The steering wheel is relatively flat compared with a passenger vehicle, but the column features tilt and reach adjustment, so you can soon get comfortable.

The engine feels a bit grumbly and coarse compared with the dual-cab utes with which many of us are more familiar. It’s not harsh, though, and soon has the Iveco accelerating, if not swiftly, then certainly with some authority and a feeling it would take something pretty solid to slow it down.

The eight-speed transmission is calibrated – perhaps deliberately – to feel a little like the robotised manuals of some bigger trucks, and as such, can feel a little stilted in the way it ever so slightly hesitates between shifts.

The brake pedal is also placed too far to the right for comfortable left-foot braking and there’s no driver’s dead-pedal or foot-rest, suggesting that overseas crash testing may have dictated its deletion and the location of the brake pedal. That said, the Daily was originally designed as left-hand-drive, so perhaps the switch from left to right has imposed some of those compromises.

The other complaint is in the form of the new-for-2026 gear selector. It uses the now common separate Park button, but until Park is engaged, the button is not illuminated or identified in any way and simply looks like another piece of black plastic on the shifter. Once you know where it is, you’re fine, but until then…

The electric power-steering poses no challenges and, in fact, is kind of a metaphor for the whole experience. It’s easy and tactile to operate and takes no time at all to feel comfortable. That’s assuming that you can learn to trust your exterior mirrors and the rear-view camera, because with the standard cargo barrier installed and the lack of an interior mirror, there’s more or less zero rear vision.

Improvements to the Daily’s safety are one of the big headlines here. Well, in Europe, perhaps, because in Australia, the upgrades kind of amount to playing catch-up. But the new driver assistance packages are the real news here and, as such, the Iveco vans now get functions such as active cruise-control, traffic-jam assist, lane centring, autonomous emergency braking (that also identifies pedestrians and cyclists), blind-spot warning and rear-cross traffic alert and assist.

The three-seat cabin features four airbags; a driver and passenger front airbag and two side-curtain bags. The Daily has been crashed tested in Europe according to NCAP protocols and scored a maximum five stars.

A new, deformable crush-box in the front structure of the Daily is designed to give the vehicle improved passenger-protection in a frontal crash.

Top tethers and ISOFIX anchors for child seats are provided with configuration varying by body type.

The Kampervan carries Volkswagen Australia’s full five-year/unlimited-kilometre warranty. That extends to not just the base vehicle, but the whole conversion including all of Jayco’s additions and other aftermarket fittings.

VW offers a version of capped price servicing called its 'Service Care Plan' that covers scheduled maintenance for the first five years and can be purchased at the time the vehicle is ordered.

No price for this was available as we went to press, but for reference, the same five-year service plan for the Amarok dual-cab ute costs $1900.

Standard service intervals are every 12 months or 20,000km, whichever comes first.

Because they’re truck-based, the Iveco vans have meaningful service intervals as a way of keeping down-time to a minimum. In the case of the 42S and 50C models, that translates to a whopping two years or 50,000km between services, whichever comes first. We understand that relies on a particular type of engine oil being used, but even so, it’s a mighty long way between drinks.

Iveco has traditionally offered service plans of up to five years, and that will continue, but we haven’t been given pricing for that at this stage.

The standard Iveco warranty applies to these models, and that gets you six years and 250,000km worth of cover. An extended driveline warranty of up to six years and 600,000km is also offered. Again, pricing for that has not been announced.

It’s also worth noting that the Iveco van engines have been Euro 6 compliant since 2015. The facelift ushers in further changes based on regulations. That means they now need AdBlue which needs to be factored in as a running cost. But because they’re designed for a European audience where emissions are arguably a much bigger issue than here, the AdBlue technology is very advanced and rules out the need for a Diesel Particulate Filter in the exhaust system; something that will appeal to a lot of would-be owners.