Van about town (and country)

Mrs Special clearly can’t get enough of small vans, but with the HA Viva being completed and the Escort 55 away having serious welding and re-commissioning, there’s a gap in The Special’s fleet.

Hence the arrival of this 2009 Citroen Berlingo. It’s the second Cit’ to join us as we already have the C15 camper, but that’s hardly useful when it comes to lugging coal sacks and bags of kindling.

Luckily our PSA-loving mate Lloyd of Swansea’s Lloyd’s Citroen Peugeot (lloyds-citroen-peugeot.co.uk) had this 130,000 miles-from-new example available and after a quick test drive a deal was struck. It’s already making itself useful, collecting the aforementioned coal and wood for the fire.

And it’s clearly led a charmed life: yes, the load-liner is scruffy but the bodywork and trim are very good, the interior especially smart – once it had enjoyed a decent valet. Three hours got things almost back to new.

Fully serviced and with new front tyres we’re aiming to put a fair few miles on it in the near and distant future. It’s lively and quiet and it doesn’t need a lot of diesel.

Next stages? Replace the load liner and fit a set of new Citroen wheel trims. A repaint’s on the cards too, in another Citroen colour. But it’s definitely not remaining white…