Volkswagen Kombi Beach 2006 Review

7-day Test

As one who called an old first-generation Kombi home for the duration of the first Sunbury Pop Festival and borrowed my brother's second-generation Kombi on dates when I didn't plan on coming home, the Kombi Beach suddenly seemed like a golden hits radio station. Forty years after its time, is the Kombi Beach another throwback for nostalgic baby boomers?

It took my elderly parents who have travelled the length and breadth of Australia in a pop top camper trailer and across Europe in a proper four-berth mobile home to provide some perspective. As soon as they saw it, their response was that it was exactly what they were looking for 30 years ago. For them, the fact that the Kombi Beach is not weighed down with the kitchen sink and everything that goes with it was its great appeal.

The ability to just stop in the bush, unclip the table from inside the side door for indoor or outdoor use, then relax in the standard foldaway chairs while dinner cooked, appealed to them. A water container, small portable fridge and stove of your choice are all that's missing from this dream scenario as the Kombi Beach is equipped with a second battery and 12-volt outlet. What they liked was how quickly you could pack up and be on the move again.

The plan was to take the test Kombi Beach into a remote corner of the bush, give my parents the bridal suite inside while setting up a tent outside for the younger generation (it's all relative!). If you had two kids, this is where the Kombi Beach makes sense: comfort and privacy for the oldies inside, adventure and freedom for the youngsters just outside Mother Ship Kombi Beach. At this point, the best of plans came adrift.

After travelling almost 80kms through the bush on a variety of forestry roads and fire access tracks, a suitable camping spot was found. There is no point owning a Kombi Beach if it can't go at least some of the way off the beaten track. Its capabilities on rough road are quite impressive even if it's a little too big and catches its fair share of tree branches. Its high-riding commercial origins ensured it rarely grounded on the crown of a track and its standard traction control and low-revving diesel power were enough to get it through the occasional boggy patch. Even if you need to turn back on a narrow boggy track, it doesn't matter if your back wheels are sitting in slush as long as you keep the front wheels on a firm surface. 

In a round trip of 156km slogging through the bush holding the Tiptronic auto in second or third gear, we averaged 8.4lt/100km. With 340Nm of torque available at 2000rpm, it rarely needed to rev above 1500 as the substantial frontal area is not an issue at these speeds. At a steady 100km/h, you can consider VW's combined figure of 9.3lt/100km as maximum fuel consumption when it seems to roll with so little resistance. At higher speeds, it may not be as thrifty.

You need every bit of the Kombi Beach's clever storage facilities once on the move, including the overhead storage nets for bedding in the rear and big storage drawers under the front section of the rear seat and the padded section next to it. The area under the bed platform in the rear is vital for water, food and other camping aids. The huge liftback is a useful shelter if it is raining. Providing the cooking heat is not close enough to melt the trim, it can also provide an emergency undercover kitchen.

After everyone had commented on the "stretched-limo" levels of leg room front and rear and the panoramic view trough the huge windows, it was time to set up the dining room by erecting the table and swivelling the front seats. A quick search for the Kombi Beach's standard ‘Good Night Package' which includes window shades revealed they were missing; an inconvenience more than a problem. Then it was time for what should have been a simple pull of a lever to make up the double bed.

The release lever to fold the seat could not be found. Fortunately, VW's fat ownership manual with a detailed Kombi Beach supplement was on board. It pictured a release handle in the seat back. Except it didn't exist. The seat could be laid flat by manually tripping the seat catches, but there was no way you could get it back up again to provide a seat with seatbelts for the trip home. Mission over. There was no choice but to retrace our steps in the dark and return home. The fatherly advice to always check your equipment before setting out was a timely reminder of the golden rule for any overnight trip.

Back at the dealership, even the service manager couldn't find the lever to collapse the seat. He manually collapsed it by releasing the catches, hoping the release lever might show up in the process. As expected, the seat could not be returned upright and the next journalist was due to pick it up within an hour or so. A combined effort involving the sales and service team who partially dismantled a similar showroom vehicle, revealed a small length of black cloth tape tucked up behind the backrest. It could only be accessed through the gap between cushion and back rest providing you knew where to look. A tug on the tape and everything worked as it should.

So for all those Kombi Beach owners who read this and end up spending their first night in comfort and style, of which there is plenty if you can find that elusive piece of tape, you can thank CarPoint for being the first in this country to find that the Kombi Beach handbook will not tell you how the seat/bed folding mechanism works.

The return trip was relaxed, the headlights were good, the handling secure and the 96kW diesel engine was willing and able, if not as smooth and responsive as the premium 128kW version. Even though the ride was firm and the rear bench is a folded-up bed, the passengers gave it full marks for travelling comfort. But we were meant to be camping. The Kombi Beach and all its wizardry had not matched the lump of plastic foam that would have cost us all of two dollars on our way out to Sunbury in 1972.

Lying on a bed that wouldn't convert back into a seat for a trip home would have been an adventure over 30 years ago but not today. Perhaps it was like expecting Guy Sebastian to match Billy Thorpe's belter "Most People I Know Think that I'm Crazy".