Mercedes-Benz Vito: ‘More than just a van’

Once seen merely as workhorses, the new generation of vans are highly adaptable all-rounders

Mercedes-Benz Vito 119 Sport Crew
Price 28,485
Power 190bhp
Payload 1,250kg
MPG 47.1
CO2 158g/km

It's 5am on a blissful Saturday morning and in the van are two Kiwis, a Welshman, a Frenchman and a Scot. There are also five bikes (partially dismantled), sleeping bags, camping chairs, a stove, a tool box, a large kit bag each, lots of food, water and sweets, and a weird vibrating rubber massage tool which the Scot swears is not a bedroom aid. As a group we are driving to Biarritz from London to spend six days cycling across the Pyrenees, ending in Girona before schlepping home. Six hours earlier all this caboodle was on the pavement and we faced the Tetris-like challenge of getting it all in. The Welshman claimed to be a "packing genius". But the real star of the show was the Mercedes-Benz Vito. It wolfed the lot then hunkered down and cruised the length of France in a single day - even coping with being battered by marble-sized hailstones at one point, which made such a roar on its tin roof we thought it might look as if we'd been sprayed in a drive-by.