Toyota Proace City Review 2024

The Toyota Proace City is something of an anomaly – built in the same factory as Stellantis’s small vans under a shared manufacturing agreement and with no Toyota mechanical components, yet subject to the Japanese manufacturer’s 10-year warranty. It sounds almost too good to be true – but is it? Read our full Toyota Proace City review to find out.

The Citroen Berlingo may well be the best-seller in the small van class, but the Toyota Proace is essentially the same van, along with the Peugeot Partner, Vauxhall Combo and Fiat Doblo. Each of those vans is marketed with a USP, be it seating lighting or technology. For Toyota, it’s peace of mind, with all of its vans having a 10-year or 120,000-mile warranty.

While Stellantis uses its might to attack the fleet market, then, Toyota has an offer that’s bound to appeal to small traders and micro-fleets.

Based on the model introduced in 2018, the latest Toyota Proace brings in a comprehensive suite of safety equipment and advanced technology, including inductive smartphone charging, digital instrumentation, a new 10-inch HD infotainment display, blind spot warnings and Dynamic Surround Vision, which uses a screen in the place of a rear-view mirror to transmit camera views from behind the van to the driver’s eyeline. Clever stuff, as well as improving safety for all.  

There’s also an electric model – the Toyota Proace City Electric – which we’ve reviewed separately and which adds even more diversity to the brand’s model range. Here we’re focusing on the more traditional petrol and diesel models, which Toyota says will make up over 70 per cent of Proace sales until 2027 at least.

Despite its small proportions, the Toyota Proace is a spacious and practical van with two different body length options, the longer of which is also offered as a crew cab and has seats that can be folded away to give the best of both worlds.

Three trim levels are offered: Active, Icon and Sport, the first of which is more fleet-focused and the second of which is the plusher, more comfort-oriented model that Toyota expects to make up the bulk of small-user sales. The Sport adds alloy wheels. All come with a 10-year warranty.

The Toyota Proace City is a very pleasant van to drive, and while maybe not quite as sharp as the Ford Transit Connect, it’s nevertheless easy, agile and car-like to drive, with a smooth ride, precise steering and pretty good handling, whether laden and unladen.

The ICE engines on offer are all derivatives of Stellantis Group’s 1.5-litre diesel, which is offered in power outputs of 100 and 136PS.

The less powerful of the two is the volume seller and it punches well above its weight, easily coping with the one-tonne payload and with a smooth-shifting six-speed manual gearbox, our only real criticism being that the rectangular shift lever feels a bit strange and bulky to hold. The 136PS derivative is offered only with the six-speed manual or eight-speed automatic gearbox and is surprisingly lively – a perky van that’s in its element in all driving situations.

Otherwise, visibility is good all-round and there’s also a decent suite of safety equipment, including lane departure warning, blind spot assist, hill start assist, active safety-assisted braking and hill descent control, plus the new Dynamic Surround View system which projects a rearward-view of the van to the rear-view mirror housing. It’s helpful for changing lanes and travelling in traffic, but the camera system makes it hard to judge the distance of following vehicles and they appear much closer than they are.

There are two lengths of Toyota Proace City offered in the UK, known inventively as ‘Short’ and ‘Long’. Both are designed with function very much in mind. In Short layout the Toyota Proace City is 4.4 metres long, with 3.3 metres of usable load bay length and the option of a load-through bulkhead. It’ll swallow a Euro pallet and comes with a single side loading door.

Twin side loading doors are offered on the 4.75-metre-length Long model, which will gobble up two Euro pallets, as well as a crew cab option which will still swallow one pallet.

Both have a flat load bay and narrow wheelarch intrusions, making them pretty spacious for small vans.

In non-EV form, the maximum payload is one tonne – an impressive claim for a van with such a small footprint, even in Short layout.

The cabin is smart and well-trimmed with a new digital instrument cluster that’s both fuss-free and easy to use, and a concentric steering wheel that allows better access and egress to the cabin – but in Active trim it does feel a bit spartan with hard plastics and some cheaper-feeling trim. The Icon has a softer touch steering wheel and more specification, making it feel more upmarket as a result.

Major controls are operated either via the 10-inch touchscreen or (in the case of the ventilation features) through fiddly buttons mounted beneath it – easy to operate with the simple up/down paddles of the climate control but not quite so intuitive with the more basic controls of air-con equipped models.