Postman Pat wrote:
Oh aye... the headrests and the middle seat belt are indeed attached to the bulkhead. The middle seat is positioned so anyone using it would have their legs in the same footwell as the other passenger... so yes it would get cosy if you had two burly builders in there.
I suppose it's a USP that none of the other manufacturers have, regardless of how useless (like DRLs) it actually is.
My old 230LXs had no bulkhead, just the driver's 'safety cage' and both of their cabin trims suffered from the vans being used as little more than skip wagons on site jobs, so I intentionally picked a van with a bulkhead to make the thing last a bit better - even if the load-through on the Connect is farcically small. Remember, I was perilously close to being lumbered with a Caddy Maxi
Actually the new Citroen Berlingo and Peugeot Partner (PSA group) have had this daft arrangement for years. Ford slavishly followed suit, and managed to make a worse job of it.
The PSA models have conventional seats, and a better bulkhead arrangement (a mix of mesh & solid) with a full size load-through gap which will take ladders, toolboxes, and all sorts of stuff. The restyled Vauxhall Combo/Fiat Doblo coming next year (looks much better at the front than the present pug ugly) is going to have this 3-seat option too, but Fiat are only offering the 3-seat cab outside the UK.
When you think about it, a flap-down middle seat as a writing surface really only works in left-hand-drive vans .... or in the UK for lefthanded drivers like me.