The big news in the vehicle launch space this week has been the arrival of the new IVECO Daily range, released into the wild at the Tailem Bend motorsport park in South Australia.
From a design and underpinnings perspective, it’s a facelift and refresh, meaning the Daily retains all of its flowing lines. That’s great in a world where body and coach design teams across the automotive sector appear to be using their company accountant-supplied Temu 90° set-squares to facilitate tomorrow’s mundane rectangles of utilitarian and human carriage. God bless Italy.
The main pickups? Safety and emissions are the real biggies, with safety probably the trump card in the whole shebang. The Daily was beginning to suffer compared to some of the competition in the active safety space, and that’s now been rectified. The new Daily has an NCAP-5 rating and all the bells and whistles modern vehicles are encouraged to contain, especially those competing in the corporate and fleet space – 78% of the Daily’s market according to James Johnson, national manager of fleet in Australia.
Traffic jam assist, lane centering, stop/go adaptive cruise, AEBS and city brake, turn assist, blind-spot information, blind spot door opening warning, rear cross traffic breaking…if you still hit something maybe driving’s not for you. The only potential missing link in all that is an over-height warning – and to be fair it’s more a productivity thing unless you’re smuggling people in the overhead.
The chassis has also been reinforced and a frontal crash box added.
The Daily is now Euro-6e emissions, the ‘e’ largely flagging improved particulate management and cold start performance.
Inside the cabin it’s a wee bit different. There’s a fully digital dash, a big 10in infotainment tablet (still facing the back of the cab), revised USB and connectivity hardware, and a new HI-MATIC shifter complex, which is now…more complex. Instead of the one-lever-does-all system, modes have been broken out to a separate switch, and manual is now a kick to the left and then up and down on a separate sagittal plane. It’s still easy to use, but having known ‘single shot Sam’, ‘Two-gun Terry’ seems clumsier.
The driver gets a memory foam seat, and there’s keyless entry that has been an understandable request from the in/out all day customer base.
In terms of actually driving them – they’re a Daily. Delightful, comfy, and fun. More on wheel-time in content down the track.
The new 42S van kicks the new range off with a jump in capacity over the old 35 to 4250kg GVM (NZ to be confirmed…might be more), and more torque at 430Nm (317lb/ft). The big 155kW (210hp) horse is now standard on all 70C cab/chassis and vans, as well as the crew cab 50C. Diff-lock is standard on all 50 and 70C crew-cabs and ECAS is now standard on 70C crew cabs also, and optional on the van.
Volumetric load capacity is still bewildering, with the 42C kicking off at 12m3 topping out at the 70C’s top number of 20m3 … and a GVM of 7000kg. Talking about the big 70C, James Johnson said, “We have to tell the world about our best-kept secret. We don’t have a competitor in that sector.”
Iveco are offering purchase upgrade packs with the new model – base, business, and premium, with significant levels of customisation within the latter two. The base package is obviously aimed at price.
Sealing the whole deal is a six-year 250,000km warranty.
“We know in certain segments it’s [Daily] the go to vehicle and we want to continue that, so it’s great to be able to launch the new model,” said Glen Dyer, managing director for Iveco Australia and New Zealand.
