German Car Zone

Well…looks like a 4x4…especially on the first photos. Don't know what I should say about this. Was never a fan of the Viano and loved the VW Multivan T5 much much more…

As well as facelift it could be testing other drivetrains etc.

VW Transporter/Multivan is also due for an update

Who cares?

They're not bad. I once drove the predecessor, the V-Class. What a POS that was. Makes the W163 ML look like a quality car!

The Viano was pretty decent - if it wasn't a manual transmission version. The cockpit is so cramped in terms of knee space that everytime you shift your left knee would hit the dashboard when you engaged or disengaged the clutch.

Overall though much better than the V-Class and very practical. You see a lot of them here as taxis or urban delivery vans.

No they are not bad at what they are supposed to be doin,but they are too far from dropping any interest

I'm thinking the same

I think these don't do MB's rep any good. Quite poorly finished, and not soo reliable... The Multivan is better finished, more attractive...but even less reliable!

The first Vito (and V-Class) were simply put the worst vehicles ever to bear the star. Absolutely garbage. The pre-CDI models were unreliable as to the point of making a Peugeot look rock-solid. And after 2 years they were rusted to the bones.
I never understood how they could let them roll out of the dealership with such a low level of quality. Did they ditch the whole test-phase back in the time? The current Vito/Viano is way better, in every aspect, still not really worth the star for me.

The V-Class was actually just a more upscale version of the Vito van, which was made in Vitoria, Spain. Mercedes at that time made two mistakes.

First they decided that a "luxury version" of the Vito would be a good idea. It was at the time but the V-Class was poorly built and wasn't luxurious at all. The interior was the same as the Vito with a few strips of cheap-looking wood here and there. Nothing fancy at all.



The second mistake was the Vaneo. Someone up at the top thought this car without a clear market would be useful. It wasn't. To this day I still have no clue why they made it.




At least the V-Class looked pretty good for a mid 1990s van...

I tend to disagree with the "it looked good" part...
This here is end of 80's/begin 90's and looks much much better.



Also, making the Vito a V-Class sure was a bad idea... But making the Vito that bad is a worse idea. It's the Mercedes of the vans after all, so it shouldn't be dead-unreliable and prone to rust like notjing else on the planet, with a below-awful finish...

The current Vito is better, but it still isn't a really convincing car...

The Vaneo is also quite ugly. At least it's very dependable and reliable like every MB should be.