New Toyota van is pretty ace

Toyota is a company that loves a partnership.

It commissioned Yamaha to develop many of its petrol engines, it joint-developed a sports car with Subaru, sold engines to Lotus and agreed fuel cell and electric vehicle technology with BMW.

Perhaps then, it won’t surprise you to learn that when the Japanese giant was looking to rejuvenate its position in the LCV sector, it decided not to strike out alone. Instead it agreed a partnership with PSA Peugeot Citroen and the Proace was born.

The first generation version was a rebadged version of the Citroen Dispatch and the Peugeot Expert and was launched in 2013 towards the end of the model lives of both those designs.

This MK2 Proace, launched in mid2016, is a much more modern thing, still sharing most parts with its French stablemates but featuring a lot more Toyota input in its design.

The Proace is available with a range of diesel engines: if your requirements are mainly based around lighter loads and short distance urban work, then the entry-level 94bhp 1.6-litre diesel will be quite sufficient.

For heavier payloads and longer journeys however, you’ll be needing the 114bhp 1.6-litre diesel model which also gives you a six-speed gearbox in space of the feebler 1.6’s five-speeder.

There’s more to the Proace than meets the eye.

The neat and unassuming styling leads you to believe that it’s not a hugely capacious thing but there’s versatility in the model configurations and the range covers a lot of bases.

There’s a choice of three body sizes – Compact Medium and Long. With each vehicle length, the Proace benefits from left and right side sliding doors and side-hinged rear double doors that open to 180 degrees.

Prices start at just under £18,000 excluding VAT for panel van versions. That gets you the smallest compact size of course and the lowest-powered 94bhp 1.6-litre diesel engine.

A premium of around £600 more gets you the larger medium bodystyle, at which point you’ll be offered the opportunity to find a further £900 more for the pokier 114bhp version of the 1.6litre diesel engine – the one most buyers will probably want.

We’re still looking at the early stages of Toyota’s rejuvenation in the commercial van sector.

The choice of Proace derivatives isn’t quite as large as some rivals can offer but what’s available will hit the sweet spot for 80% of users, all the key bases having been covered when it comes to size, weight and power.

The range covers a lot of bases