Fiat Doblo long-term test report 4
Can the Fiat Doblo provide the right amount of space and enough range for a videographer spending life on the road?...
The Car Fiat Doblo L1 Multijet3 1.5 100ps manual Primo Run by Tom Goodban, Videographer
Why it’s here To prove there are compact van alternatives to the Ford Transit, and ones which you should consider alongside it
Needs to Act as a mobile office on video shoots and cover long distances to shoot locations around the country
Mileage 4393 List price £24,040 (exc. VAT) Price as tested £24,573 (exc. VAT) Official economy 54mpg Test economy 46.8mpg
25 June 2025 – Eyes in the back of my head
In all my years of driving I had never actually driven a van until the Fiat Doblo entered my life. And while I chose one for my work, one of my worries when making the change from car to van was visibility.
That's because, of course, in a car if you want to see what’s behind you it’s a simple matter of glancing at your rearview mirror.
Getting in the Doblo for the first time, however; looking in the rearview mirror gave me a terrific view of the fixed bulkhead separating the front seats from the cargo area at the rear.
Having no rear window was quite unsettling at first. Like most people (I hope), I like to see what’s happening around me when driving. Thankfully, though, my Doblo is full of features to let me do just that.
For example, the rear-view mirror is no ordinary piece of glass. At the flick of a switch at its base it’s transformed into a very handy digital rear view mirror, providing me with a live feed of what’s happening behind me through a camera at the rear of the van. The majority of the time it works really well.
Not all the time, though. When driving in the rain the camera at the rear gets drowned in water spray from the roof, covering the lens and giving me a view that reminds me of my goggles filling up with water during a childhood swimming lesson. This does clear when you come to a stop at a junction or traffic lights, but perhaps Fiat could have found a better position for the actual camera to mitigate this.
You can change the angle of the camera to look up or down as you please, and there is a brightness option as well, allowing you to dim the feed when driving at night – all of which is easily controlled through some subtle buttons at the base of the mirror.
There’s even a 'lateral side view' which offers another angle of my passenger-side blindspot alongside the rear-view camera. And if a car is in my blindspot, the blindspot monitor system gives a signal in the door mirror.
So, I never needed to worry about visibility in the Doblo, after all, because it turns out my small van is bristling with the latest tech.
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