Ah, those pesky steering wheels. If it wasn’t for our insistence on driving on the left (and having our steering wheels mounted on the right), we would have had a lot more of the Continental offerings made available to us here in the UK. A case in point: the newest iteration of one of the motorhome world’s best-kept secrets – the Mercedes-Benz Marco Polo motorhome by Westfalia

This model has been around for 34 years, but up until now, Mercedes-Benz UK has not stepped into the market in Britain with a Mercedes-Benz badged offering. Originally launched as a Westfalia-only product on the Mercedes L207/208 van in 1981, the Marco Polo is now in its fifth generation and Mercedes-Benz UK has confirmed it will go on sale here for the first time next year. 

The reason we haven’t seen previous models here in the UK is due to Mercedes’ vans in RHD form always having a sliding door on each side in order to reduce the number of body-in-white variants for Mercedes-Benz to produce. This has made it difficult to offer a kitchen aisle as in the Marco Polo. We spoke to Mercedes-Benz Vito expert Andreas Rein and suggested leaving the left door and creating a closed rear panel for the kitchen. “That’s not a bad idea, but we will have to see if it could work and what the numbers are,” he said. Mercedes-Benz UK spokesman Angus Fitton hinted that the reason for the launch delay was partly due to engineering work to enable both variants being offered in the UK.