Choosing between a saloon and a people carrier

Three things, and only one of them is seats. The obvious change is that six passengers travel with everybody in a proper individual seat rather than a bench. The second is the boot: four large cases behind the rear row, with all six seats still in use, which is roughly double what a saloon manages.

The third is the one people notice most and mention least: getting in and out. Sliding doors and a step-in height that does not require you to drop into a seat make an enormous difference to anybody with a stiff knee, a long coat or a small child on their hip. On a wet evening outside a restaurant that alone is worth the difference.

• Six individual seats rather than four including a middle
• Four large cases with every seat still occupied
• Sliding doors and a higher, easier step-in
• Room to turn round and talk to the people behind you

Three adults with hand luggage on a short journey is a saloon, comfortably, and paying for a V-Class is paying for two empty seats. Three adults with three hold cases is a V-Class, because the boot is the constraint rather than the seats. Three adults on a journey over about an hour is a V-Class if you can, because the middle seat stops being tolerable somewhere in the second half-hour.

The version that catches people out is three adults who are all six feet tall. A saloon rear bench is 1.4 metres or so of usable width, which is fine for two and a genuine squeeze for three large adults in winter coats. If the party is physically big, treat three as a people carrier job whatever the journey length.

Four passengers with eight large cases is not a V-Class, it is two cars or a Sprinter. The rear row is where the luggage would otherwise go, and once you have six people in a V-Class you have four cases of boot rather than eight. That is the honest ceiling and it is worth knowing before rather than after.

On very long journeys the saloon is often better even with three passengers. A V-Class is a comfortable vehicle but it is taller, noisier at motorway speed and less settled on a poor surface than an S-Class. Three people going from London to Edinburgh will have a better day in a large saloon with one of them in the front than in a people carrier, and the seat quality over eight hours matters more than the extra shoulder room.

And where a group genuinely wants to sit facing each other and talk, neither is right; that is a Sprinter with a proper cabin layout, and it costs considerably more.

On a Heathrow run the gap is small. On as-directed work it is a modest hourly difference, which over a four-hour block is still modest. On a Gatwick transfer it widens, because the extra mileage magnifies everything. None of those gaps is large in the context of a journey people are already paying properly for.

The useful way to think about it is per person. Six people in a V-Class from Heathrow costs well under half per head what three people in an E-Class costs. On a per-head basis the larger vehicle is nearly always the better value, which is the opposite of how people instinctively price it.

• Heathrow to central London: a small step up for the van
• Gatwick to central London: a wider step, because of the mileage
• Half-day hire: a modest hourly difference over the block
• Per passenger, the larger vehicle is usually cheaper