Shite vehicle design

[bunglebus]

Yep, there have been a few threads about this before, but most are ancient. Had the pleasure of driving a Luton bodied Citroen van today. I drive all sorts of vans, Transit, Sprinter, various Peugeot etc and normally they're fairly well thought out from a driver's point of view. However this was my view from a comfortable driving position 

I'm average height so it's not like I have my seat right at one end of the runners or anything. 

Not only is that quarterlight right across the mirror, they also didn't adjust out far enough so all I could see was the sides of the van. A hangover of being designed as LHD possibly? 

[Rustybullethole]

Not adjustable in any way?
A clever mate of mine kindly adjusted the passenger mirror on my transit which I’d gripfiled into the wrong position after it fell out. He did this by adding a couple of pennies down the back of the hinge bit. It’s spot on now, man’s a genius. 

[Rustybullethole]

Massive blind spot on the a piller too hey. 

[bunglebus]

20 minutes ago, Rustybullethole said:

Not adjustable in any way?
A clever mate of mine kindly adjusted the passenger mirror on my transit which I’d gripfiled into the wrong position after it fell out. He did this by adding a couple of pennies down the back of the hinge bit. It’s spot on now, man’s a genius. 

Electrically adjustable, but despite that and physically pushing the glasses, that's as far as they'd go

19 minutes ago, Rustybullethole said:

Massive blind spot on the a pillar too hey. 

Can't say it seemed like it, does look bad in that photo but it's no different to a Sprinter or whatever

[Rustybullethole]

Shocking. Kin dangerously so. 

[catsinthewelder]

We had one like that, swapped the mirrors over to the short arm ones from a panel van and it's fine now.

[cobblers]

Yup,  the pillar is a bit of a chode but it's the long arm mirrors that ruin it. However if you take the bulkhead out of a panel van and slide the drivers seat right back (for some reason, even at 5 foot 9 I have most seats as far back as they go) you do have to lean forward a bit to get full view.

To be fair the whole van is made of parts bin sweepings up from all over the place - Ford engines, Fiat electrics, some random chrysler/dodge influence over mildly refreshed very old designs. We look back at the development of the Sherpa on ARonline and laugh, but the Boxer is just the same. 

It's a mk3 talbot express with a facelift, and looking under my old talbot and under the boxer you can see that they are very similar, I've read that the rear axle and springs are more or less interchangeable. Front struts look like they will swap over too, same weird 4 bolt mounting onto the hub etc.