Fiat Doblo Review & Prices

The Fiat Doblo is a compact delivery van which shares all of its components and body with the Citroen Berlingo, the Peugeot Partner, Vauxhall Combo, and the Toyota Proace City. Being Italian, it’s a little more stylish to look at than those other vans — think of it as a postman in an Armani suit. 

With all of these vans being basically the same, it’s mostly a matter of choosing which one you prefer, or which one has a dealer located nearest to you, but make sure you read the fine print of the equipment, warranties, and payloads, as there are some differences. For instance, Fiat offers a five-year warranty, five year’s fixed servicing, and five years’ roadside assistance, although that does cost an extra £555.

Still, for not a massive outlay that gives the Doblo a leg up both against its own stablemates, and against the likes of the Ford Transit Connect, VW Caddy, and the Renault Kangoo. 

Speaking of which , the Doblo is slightly bigger than the Kangoo (or the Mercedes Citan, which is a Kangoo with a three-pointed star badge). It’s wider and higher than either of those, which increases the loadspace, although you’ll ultimately fit more into a Caddy or Transit Connect. 

There’s both a panel van model, and a crew-van with extra seats (don’t go expecting rear windows though, because there aren’t any) and you can choose from standard M length, or an extended XL body.

Unlike the Berlingo, though, there’s no petrol engine option. Instead you can choose between two diesel engines — actually the same 1.5-litre unit, which Fiat calls ‘Multijet’ and which comes in either 100hp form with a manual gearbox or 130hp form with an automatic gearbox. 

There’s also the e-Doblo electric version, which is sufficiently different a van that we’ll give it its own separate review. 

The Doblo comes in two trim levels — Doblo and Primo, although the Primo is only available as a panel van and not a crew-van. Standard equipment for Doblo models includes a smartphone dock with Bluetooth connection and two USB sockets, a six-way adjustable driver’s seat, a two-seat passenger section with folding seatbacks to form a table or allow for longer loads, manual air conditioning, overhead storage shelf, asymmetrical rear doors, electric windows and mirrors (the mirrors are heated, too), remote central locking, driver, passenger, side, and curtain airbags, cruise control, a speed limiter, rear parking sensors, lane keeping assistant, and an advanced emergency braking system.

Upgrading to Primo spec gets you a ten-inch infotainment touchscreen, a ten-inch digital instrument panel, LED headlights, automatic high-beam lights, rain sensing wipers, and a 360-degree parking camera system. 

The cabin, unsurprisingly, copies what you get in the Citroen, Peugeot, Vauxhall, and Toyota and it’s reasonably well laid-out, although the optional touchscreen is needlessly fiddly to use (although at least Fiat has kept proper button for the air conditioning) and the cabin width is a bit tight if you have three people on board. However, driver comfort has been prioritised as even the basic Doblo models come with a driver’s seat armrest and adjustable lumbar support. 

Interested in a Doblo? Then why not check out our Fiat leasing and finance deals? And don’t forget that you can sell your old van through Carwow.

Prices for the Doblo, ex-VAT, start at just over £21,000 which makes it a touch more expensive than the equivalent Citroen Berlingo. It’s also about the same price as a Peugeot Partner, and cheaper than the outgoing Transit Connect (although it’s a lot pricier than the admittedly smaller new Transit Courier). The Toyota Proace City is fractionally more expensive than the Doblo, while the Vauxhall Combo is quite a bit pricier than either. The Renault Kangoo splits the difference in price between the Doblo and the Combo, while a VW Caddy Cargo is the most expensive of the bunch. That makes the Doblo and the Berlingo the best choices in terms of price.

The 1.5-litre diesel used in the Doblo is a solid enough engine, with decent performance, although the 100hp version can start to feel breathless if you’re trying to carry loads at high motorway speeds. The six-speed gearbox is OK — a little loose in its shift action, but nothing to worry about — but the automatic option, with the extra 30hp, is worth thinking about as it’s not a massive leap up in price, and the auto is especially handy if you’re doing lots of in-town work, dealing with traffic all the time.

The Fiat Doblo is a well-sized van, capable of swallowing a large payload, but it can’t quite handle the weight that some rivals can manage. At the rear, there’s a pair of asymmetric barn-style doors,  which open to a full 180-degrees for unobstructed loading. 

There’s a standard sliding side door on the left-hand side as standard on all models, but if you want a second side door on the right, you’ll need to upgrade to the longer-wheelbase L2 model. 

That L2 model stretches to 4,753mm in overall length, and gets both a longer wheelbase and a bit more rear overhang, dramatically increasing the size and length of load that you can carry. Crew-Van models get rear seats that can fold into the floor, as well as a sliding bulkhead for maximum versatility. There’s also an optional load-through bulkhead which folds the outer front seat flat and means you can carry longer, narrow loads such as ladders or lengths of timber. 

Fiat Doblo internal and external measurements

Exterior dimensions

All versions (L1/L2)
Exterior length: 4,403mm/4,753mm
Exterior height: 1,796-1,860mm/1,812-1860
Exterior width with mirrors: 2,107mm
Exterior width without mirrors: 1,848mm

Interior load length (L1/L2)

Van
To bulkhead : 1,817mm/2,167mm
With load-through bulkhead: 3,090mm/3,440mm

Crew Van

To bulkhead: 1450mm
Rear seats folded, bulkhead forward: 2,000mm
Rear seats and passenger seat folded: 3,050mm

Interior loading width

All versions

Max: 1,527mm (1,630 for L1)
Between wheel arches: 1,229mm

Interior loading height (L1/L2)

Van
Max height: 1,200mm/1,270mm

Crew Van

Max height: 1,243mm

Rear door aperture height/width

All versions: 1,196mm/1,241mm

Side door aperture height/width

All versions: 1,072mm/675mm

Fiat Doblo towing capacity

Doblo models can tow between 720-1050kg braked.

Fiat Doblo payload

The Doblo falls just short of its Citroen Berlingo cousin in terms of payload weight — the Citroen can carry just over one-tonne, while the Doblo’s best effort is 984kg for the MultiJet 1.5 130hp in L1 form. 

The lowest possible payload that the Doblo can carry is 840kg (that’s for the 100hp Crew-Van model) while the longer-wheelbase L2 models can carry between 927kg and 953kg. 

The Doblo actually sits on the same basic mechanical package as many of the passenger car models from the vast Stellantis Group company (which includes the likes of Fiat, Peugeot, Citroen, Vauxhall, and more). Because of that, many of the interior components look and feel like high-quality items, although beware the nasty cheap plastic steering wheel fitted to basic Doblo versions. 

The Doblo driver gets a dashboard centre console that’s angled towards them, including the optional touchscreen, and the manual gear stick is nice and close to the steering wheel. Thankfully, Fiat hasn’t bunged the air conditioning controls onto the touchscreen — they’re still managed by proper physical buttons, which makes life on board way easier although they could be better lit at night. 

Speaking of touchscreens, the optional ten-inch screen does look smart, and comes with a variety of online services including roadside assistance connection, mobile phone remote control, live mechanical health status, and fleet-management software. It’s a shame, though, that the actual way the screen works is too fiddly and has too many oddball menu choices making it hard to find some functions. 

Still, you do get Apple CarPlay and Android Auto if you want to listen to some podcasts on your delivery route, and there’s a pair of USB sockets for keeping devices charged up. The basic Doblo does without a touchscreen but instead has a handy mobile phone cradle which turns your phone into the touchscreen. 

Overall space is pretty good, and there’s the comfort of having an armrest for the driver’s seat. The three-seat layout is also handy, as the back of the middle seat folds flat to become a table or even a mobile office. That said, if you’re driving with three in the cab, it can get a bit tight across the shoulders. 

Storage space is good, with a double-level glovebox, the larger of which can hold a laptop out of sight, and a storage area behind the gear lever for phones. There are cupholders on the outer edges of the dashboard, good door bins, and a handy overhead shelf. 

The 1.5-litre MultiJet diesel engine is a frugal thing, so you should easily be able to get 45mpg out of it even with a heavy load and a heavy right foot. Gentler driving should see you on the sunny side of 50mpg, and there’s a useful 17-litre AdBlue tank so you won’t have to top that up every five minutes.

All Doblos come with driver, passenger, side, and curtain airbags, which is good by small van standards. There’s also tyre pressure monitoring, stability control, brake-activated hazard lights, lane-keeping assistance, automatic emergency braking, speed limit warning, driver attention alert, and high-beam assistance for the headlights. However, if you want radar-guided cruise control or more advanced lane-keeping, those only come as part of a pricey options pack. There is regular cruise control and a speed limiter, though.

The remote central locking comes with deadbolts and an immobiliser, while there’s also an auto-lock that kicks in once you’re driving at 7mph or above. If you want a perimeter alarm, that’s only standard on Primo models.

The Doblo, as mentioned, shares all of its mechanical parts with other models from Peugeot, Citroen, Vauxhall, and Toyota so in general, everything is well-proven, and parts availability is fantastic if anything does go wrong. 

Overall reliability should be fine, as the 1.5 MultiJet engine has been around for a good while, and it hasn’t suffered any major issues, although there have been some software problems for the optional touchscreen. 

Fiat currently offers a five-year warranty, five years’ fixed servicing costs, and five years’ roadside assistance as a £555 cost extra for the Doblo. As standard, the Fiat Professional warranty lasts for three years, with unlimited mileage, and there’s an eight-year corrosion warranty.

Service intervals for the Doblo MultiJet are every 20,000 miles or 12 months.