Mercedes-Benz unveiled the first of a new generation of vans at the IAA Transportation Show in Hanover. The company has also recently launched a new version of the popular Vito Sport-X exclusively for the UK market. It probably won’t feature widely in large fleets, not least because initial models will be L2 and L3 crew vans only, but we would expect to see an enthusiastic following in some small fleets and among retail buyers.  

In between test drives, we caught up with Mercedes-Benz Vans UK managing director Iain Forsyth and operations director Simon Neill to discuss both Vito Sport-X and what’s happening at Mercedes-Benz Vans.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Canadian Iain Forsyth has worked for Mercedes-Benz for 15 years, mostly in Canada and the US, where he held responsibility for international fleets before a board appointment overseeing product marketing. He joined Mercedes-Benz Vans UK as managing director in 2025. Simon Neill has worked for Mercedes-Benz Vans in the UK for 29 years, mostly in sales. For the past six years, he has been responsible for customer service and parts plus related topics.

“We launched Sport-X here in the UK about 10 years ago and after taking a couple of years off, we’re adding it in again,” explains Forsyth. “We thought that it would be the right time to bring it to the market. The medium van sector is a very competitive market with some new variants coming into play. It’s something that our customers have been asking us to bring back for quite some time. Dealer partners have asked us to come back too and we think that coming into the market now is the right time. Obviously, we’re going to test the market a bit to see what people think about it. Our dealers are definitely excited; we showed it to them at our investors’ conference and we expect our customers to be just as excited.”

Simon Neill identifies SMEs and owner-operators as the most likely customers. “I think it’s maybe anybody who’s into sport and leisure as well and I expect that it will get some traction in the market very quickly.”

Forsyth thinks that it isn’t just product that has won fleet customers over to Mercedes. “We, along with all the competition, have a fleet strategy and we’ve been very successful with some of the large fleets. More importantly, if you look back in the UK history with the customers that we’ve had, we are winning back those customers not only because of the product but also because of the service and the dealer network.”

“I think we’ve seen a real shift in the dynamic in the market,” says Neill. “What I mean by that is that previously, if we go back to the last decade, it was very much driven by transaction pricing. What we’re seeing now – and predominantly, I think it’s come as a legacy of Covid – is that there’s real recognition about that whole total cost of ownership (TCO) package. What’s driving that is an understanding of ‘What’s this vehicle going to cost me when it’s not operating?’ I think that with the conversations that we’re having with customers now, transaction pricing is always going to be a key element of the purchase decision, but it’s a case of, ‘What can you do to keep me moving?’, because the understanding that we have is great and we engage with customers but our customers are serving their customers.

“It’s a fleet buyer market and the fleet guys have got a very big share of voice. They can stamp their feet. They’ve got a lot of assets, they’ve got a huge scale, a lot of leverage and they flex their muscles and that can put our businesses under some pressure.”