KEY POINTS:
In the mainstream motoring media, we are interested almost exclusively in passenger cars - the faster and lower to the ground they are, the better.
But sometimes we get really interested in vans. Like when there's something heavy to haul around, or we're moving house.
Recently I got sidetracked by the Mercedes-Benz Sprinter 315, shown here in high-roof, long-wheelbase guise.
What I don't know about vans would fill, well, a high-roof, long-wheelbase Sprinter.
But as I understand it, this is the supersized Mercedes load-lugger. There's also a smaller (and completely different) model line, called Vito.
And I do mean "model line", because the endless combinations of chassis, wheelbase and cargo area make any attempt at providing representative specifications meaningless.
The one stand-out feature of the new Sprinter is the addition of satellite navigation to the options list.
It comes at a horrendous cost - $6558 for our test vehicle - but it is brilliant because it's exactly the same swanky system you get in Mercedes-Benz passenger cars. It comes complete with the colour COMAND screen and intuitive four-way push-button control.
Fantastic, although you'd have to deliver a lot of stuff to strange places to get your money's worth.
I loved driving the Sprinter, regardless.
The tiny 2.1-litre diesel engine was impossibly torquey, it handled brilliantly and the vast mirrors made this enormous machine a doddle to park in the tightest spaces.
So what a shame the dumbo-mirrors couldn't be folded inwards - if they had, I might actually have been able to reverse down the driveway I was loading from.
Not sure how commercial vehicle writers evaluate vans. Not sure I want find out, either, and I'll never understand why they are so expensive.
But in my book, if a van makes your friends swear at the magnitude of its exterior dimensions and you can do aerobics in the back, it gets five stars.
Well done, Sprinter.
