By Willem van de Putte

IT’S A good thing that with age comes wisdom – well most of the time. If someone had called me across as a youngster and told me that one day I would be testing a big old bus and that I would really enjoy it, I would have opened another beer and laughed haughtily.

You see, we were more interested in fine-tuning a Renault Gordini or looking at ways to slot a 1.6 TS engine into the back of the little car; playing with Alfa Romeos and Ford Cortinas to get them to do things the designers never envisaged and converting VW Beetles into Baja Bugs. Meanwhile, the old folks were poring over station wagons and Kombis.

Fast forward a couple of decades and I’m behind the wheel of a big old bus and thinking it would suit the family just fine. Well, it’s not exactly a big old bus, but VW’s