The Mercedes Vito panel van and its V-Class minivan brother celebrate their ninth birthday this year, but an imminent facelift that includes some major interior upgrades will do its best to cover up any age-related wrinkles.
As our latest spy shots show, the refreshed V-Class will benefit from a radically overhauled dashboard that swaps the old analogue instrument cluster and tablet touchscreen for a one-piece digital display that stretches across two thirds of the car, much like the one in the A-Class and B-Class.
Though this silver prototype’s dashboard is partially disguised we can still make out a couple of other important details. One is that the facelifted V-Class appears to retain the updated touchpad controller introduced in 2019. That contrasts with other recent Mercedes vehicles, like the facelifted A-Class that ditched the touchpad altogether, leaving the driver and passenger to rely on touchscreen activation and voice commands to control the MBUX infotainment system.
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The other noticeable detail is the revised shape of the console area just ahead of that touchpad and the layout of switches there. The console appears boxier, less curved, on the prototype, and its bank of hard keys used to operate the climate control settings are mounted significantly lower down. We can also see a new design of steering wheel whose lower spoke consists of a pair of parallel spokes, rather than a V-shaped section.
This van’s grille tells us it’s powered by a combustion engine, because we’ve previously spotted prototypes of both the regular V-Class and its EQV electric sister, and the EV version has had the grille blanked off behind the disguise. So this van is probably running a 2.2-liter four-cylinder diesel engine with between 187-201 hp (190-204 PS).
While Mercedes has had a change of mind over the electric version of the Sprinter van, and will launch the updated eSprinter in the U.S. this year, eventually building it in South Carolina, both the EQV and V-Class minivans are likely to remain off limits to North American buyers. Mercedes has already confirmed that the Metris, the U.S. version of the Vito panel van twinned with the V-Class, dies at the end of the 2023 model year.
