Climbing up four steps into the S-Way 570 AS High- roof reveals a classic, big, roomy premium Euro and if that’s your thing, you’ll be well pleased with what you find. It’s full width, and unless you’re Brodie Retallick, the 2150mm of headroom will allow a good old stretch when you alight from your slumber in the 800mm-wide lower bunk. In the event the kids have bumped you topside, you’ll climb down from the 600mm upper bunk.

Before we get too far in, let’s go straight for the jugular. One of the coolest things I’ve ever seen in a cab was the X-Way’s fold-down kitchen table, formed by folding up the middle section of the lower bunk, on the bottom of which was fold-out table. You then sat on either side of the remaining third of the lower bunk–facing cab centre, with a proper table to work, eat, or play solitaire at. With every S-Way I’ve encountered to date, I’ve leapt aboard, bypassing the dash dials and flashing gizmos, in search of this stroke of practical workaday design genius in the hope it made it through to the S-Way. With disappointment at every turn, I finally emailed the ever-cheerful Pieter Theron, heavy and medium truck sales excutive for Auckland at Iveco New Zealand. He could clearly read the desperation coming through the keystrokes. Oh, the joy and relief to hear it is still there, and able to be specced ex Europe. In fact, the photo he sent revealed so much more – would you believe in Europe you can include a home gym that clips on the various bits of the cab and allows a post-work workout, or early morning wake-up routine?

As you’ve guessed, the table doesn’t appear in any of the Antipodean sales material. Maybe it’s something Iveco doesn’t want to encourage? Yet the essence of a great truck is one that makes the driver’s working day easier. One that gives him facilities, and makes being in his road transport tiny home for days on end that little bit more like home.

Anyway, finishing off the sleeper, there are plenty of options including two bunks, or one and a cargo shelf – likely to be the most popular. There are in-sleeper controls for climate, door locks and lighting, as well as a reading light, plus some handy end wall caddies. Under the standard bottom bunk is a fridge/freezer and storage drawer configured in what is now the accepted standard. Both driver and passenger have a drink holder/cooler.

Finishing off the storage topic, there are door and side pelmet pockets, huge closed lockers all the way along the front and overhead with covered and open stows beneath; a stow on top of the main console, an open tray and cup holders mid-way down with a pull-out document drawer in the bottom. There’s a glovebox, and if you don’t want your passengers to ride in the same style as the driver, probably room underneath the co-pilot’s chair for the real hoarders. Externally there are roomy double lockers on both sides, accessible from within, and a word of caution here – unlike X-Way, you’ll have to keep an eye on the bottom locker’s door adjustment. It’s a ‘lifter’ and the top one’s a ‘swinger’, and in the truest sense of that metaphor, they will come together unexpectedly if not monitored. The doors on one of the trucks at the Aussie drive day certainly did.

Materials fit and finish are on point. I really like it and there’s options around seat fabrics. Looking around, and brochure surfing, I’ve given up with the colour thing now. If you can’t get the Italians to do it, then it’s a dead duck. I’m obviously the last human left who sees a spectra other than black, grey, and fawn, so I guess it’s a case of buy some tee-shirt paint and knock yourself out; unless you take another road…

The Titus Truck has the swanky RVE (retro vehicle enhancement) leather and custom interior with monogrammed seats and everything. Made here in New Zealand, the options are huge and can include a broadened palette. If you want one of these babies, have a yarn to Pieter or his colleagues at Iveco. Being the first of its breed, there was a collaboration between owner Clint Rolfe, RVE and Iveco to celebrate all that could be done.

Outside the one off aspect, it’s all hard-wearing, pleasant to the touch where it needs to be, easily cleanable, and classy. ‘Scrubby’ materials down low, and ‘wipey/ vacuumy’ materials up high.

I like the Iveco dash and layout, and as I said last month, the brand does an awesome wrap. The S-Way is certainly an evolution of the X-Way as far as the cockpit is concerned. Anyone leaping out of an X-Way into an S-Way for the first time in order to get the freight to where it needs to be is not going have much of a ‘What the…?’ moment at the surroundings at all.

It conforms to contemporary binnacle and wrap convention, although the design language linkage between the two is not as uniform as you would find in, say, a Scania. That said, it works for me, and if we hold to the premise that the S-Way is an Italian truck for reasons of cultural roots and connection, then – if it wre all the same – ‘It-a would a-be a-boring.’