Mercedes-Benz Atego

The Atego is the Mercedes-Benz distribution rigid: the truck below the Actros, on a chassis a bodybuilder finishes rather than a fifth wheel carries. Mercedes sells it in two ranges off one model series — a distribution range and a construction range, both model 967 in left- and right-hand drive, with twenty versions listed for the first and nine for the second — and in two wheel formulas, one for on-road and one for off-road use. Among its bodies Mercedes names flatbed, tipper and crane superstructure.

The nameplate is older than the figures on this page. Daimler-Benz presented the first Atego at the Amsterdam commercial vehicle show in 1998, replacing the LK light-class series, with 25 basic types covering 6.5 to 15 tonnes and a choice of the OM 904 LA and OM 906 LA — 90 to 205 kW (122 to 279 hp) and 470 to 1,300 Nm out of 4.25 and 6.37 litres. The truck described here is the second generation, rolled out in 2013 around Euro VI versions of the OM 934 and OM 936; Daimler Truck says the engines in the Atego today are the most recent versions of those two families.

Seven ratings out of two displacements

Mercedes publishes seven discrete ratings out of two displacement classes. Where it prints a range — the defence technical table’s “Power (min–max)” row reads 115–220 kW (156–299 hp), and the model pages state a ceiling of “up to 220 kW (299 hp)” — that range is a span across those seven steps, not a continuum. The span in the table above is the same span, and nothing is orderable between the steps.

The OM 934 is the four-cylinder at 5.1 litres, in four steps: 115 kW (156 hp), 130 kW (177 hp), 155 kW (211 hp) and 170 kW (231 hp), with torque of 650, 750, 850 and 900 Nm. The OM 936 is the six at 7.7 litres, in three: 175 kW (238 hp), 200 kW (272 hp) and 220 kW (299 hp), at 1,000, 1,100 and 1,200 Nm.

Two further rows of that table give engine speeds. Every rating is quoted at 2,200 rpm, and every torque figure is held between 1,200 and 1,600 rpm; how rated speed and torque band are read is set out in reading truck power figures.

Mercedes states “Euro VI” here and names no lettered sub-step anywhere this site could read one, so no sub-step is recorded here; the lettered steps are set out in Euro 6 and Euro 7.

Three transmission architectures in one model

The current documents list three gearbox types: a manual in six or eight gears, Mercedes’ own automated unit, and — on the defence 4x4’s technical table, not on any civilian sheet — an Allison fully automatic. How automated manuals and fully automatic transmissions differ is set out in automated manuals against true automatics.

The automated unit’s name is not stable across Mercedes’ own documents. The international model page and the February 2025 UK product sheet call the standard automated shift PowerShift Advanced and give it no gear count at all. The 2023 anniversary release, narrating the 2013 launch, and the defence technical table call it PowerShift 3, with six and eight gears plus EcoRoll, alongside an optional manual with six or eight gears plus crawler and a five-speed automatic for municipal work. This page records both names rather than treating them as one product. The word “automatic” does not by itself settle which type is meant: the February 2025 UK distribution sheet calls PowerShift Advanced an “automatic gear shift”.

A nine-speed appears in the 2016 UK brochure, and in the “Choice of 6, 8, and 9-speed transmission” line of the marketing panel on the defence page — the same panel that puts an “Engine OM 460 LA” on a truck its own technical table below gives an OM 934 or OM 936 — and again on the Mercedes-Benz Defence Trucks product-range page for the Atego, which offers “up to 9 speed transmissions for the drive systems”. Outside those defence marketing panels, no current Atego specification table repeats it: the defence technical table lists six or eight speeds and nothing more, the February 2025 UK distribution sheet says only “a wide array of manual and automatic transmissions” with no gear count attached, and the February 2025 UK construction sheet does not mention a transmission at all.

Braking forks the same way. The February 2025 UK construction sheet and the international construction model page both publish an optional three-stage High Performance Engine Brake at up to 300 kW depending on the engine version — wear-free in the sheet’s words, maintenance-free in the page’s — and neither restates a rating for the ordinary engine brake. The only figure for that one this site could open is the 2016 UK brochure’s — a three-stage system at up to 235 kW — and the brochure footnotes it “Available as standard from 9.5 t” rather than across the range, so on the 6.5, 7.49 and 7.99 t Ategos of that brochure’s model overview it was not standard. How engine brakes share braking work with the service brakes is set out in retarders and engine braking.

Axles and weights: two wheel formulas

Every current Mercedes wheel-formula listing for the Atego — both product sheets and both model pages — gives 4x2 and 4x4, and nothing else; the notation is explained in the axle configuration guide. The detail Mercedes publishes about the 4x4 comes from its defence range. On the Mercedes-Benz Defence Trucks Atego 4x4, a military configuration listed at 15.6–16.0 t against the UK sheets’ 7.5–15 t, with an S cab or crew cab and stealth lights among its military-specific options, Mercedes gives a 2,500 mm vehicle width, a 3,260–4,760 mm wheelbase range, 600 mm of fording rising to 800 mm as an option, gradeability up to 80%, and maximum axle loads of 6.1 t at the front and 8 t on a single-tyred or 10 t on a twin-tyred rear axle. No comparable table is published for the civilian all-wheel-drive chassis.

Of the two weights set out in gross vehicle against gross combination, the gross vehicle weight differs from one Mercedes document to the next, and no gross combination weight is published for the Atego at all.

The construction range carries a suspension menu that the February 2025 UK construction product sheet gives as steel spring suspension with a single leaf or with multiple leaves, air suspension, or full air suspension, with the choice left to the transport task; the international construction model page names only the steel single- or multi-leaf option. Both documents add a rear-axle guide and a stabiliser bar on the rear axle for stable driving, and the UK sheet adds an optional air-sprung front axle for the Atego from 12 t that automatically balances uneven loads and assists during loading and unloading.

Cabs and the engine tunnel

Four cab versions in three lengths, all 2,300 mm wide with 2,000 mm of interior width and an engine tunnel between the seats. The ClassicSpace S-cab is 1,650 mm long externally and its extended version 1,830 mm; the ClassicSpace and BigSpace L-cabs are 2,250 mm. Interior height is 1,510 mm everywhere except the BigSpace at 1,910 mm, and the 2023 anniversary release puts a single-piece bed with a seven-zone cold foam mattress in the L cab — in its Classic form as well as the BigSpace — for the occasional long-distance trip.

The label on the tunnel figure is not settled. The February 2025 UK product sheets print 320 mm under a column headed “tunnel width”. The 2016 UK brochure prints the same 320 mm for the Atego’s own cabs without naming the dimension, and in its Antos half gives 170 mm and 320 mm as engine tunnel heights, with headroom over the tunnel of 1,460 mm and 1,310 mm respectively. The international model pages carry no tunnel dimension at all. The figure is recorded here with the column label it was found under.

Cockpit, seats and on-board equipment

The international distribution and construction model pages and the UK distribution product sheet publish three cockpit layouts — Classic Cockpit, Comfort Cockpit and Standard Cockpit — sharing cup holders, power sockets and storage compartments as standard, with the Classic Cockpit adding an ashtray and a cigarette lighter with a socket function and the Comfort Cockpit adding further storage space, including an optional protruding shelf under the dash. Seats are air-sprung as standard, with a climate-controlled suspension seat offered as an option; a radio infotainment system carries traffic reports and music and, the pages say, can also run commercially available navigation systems, phones or MP3 players with voice output through the vehicle’s speakers. A reversing camera is standard, showing the area behind the vehicle.

Driver-assistance systems

The international distribution model page names three further currently fitted systems. Frontguard Assist monitors the area in front of the vehicle up to 15 km/h — while stationary, moving off or at junctions — and raises a two-stage warning when it detects a moving object ahead. Attention Assist 2 uses a camera reading the driver’s viewing angle to warn of inattentiveness or fatigue, visually and acoustically, with the page stating that the data it captures stays inside the vehicle. Active Cross Traffic Assist uses 270°-sensor fusion from camera and radar sensors on the front, corners and sides of the truck to detect crossing traffic at up to 120 km/h, issuing a warning and partial braking and, if the driver does not react, automated full braking.

Source notes

Mercedes publishes seven discrete ratings out of two displacement classes rather than a continuous range, so the power and torque spans above are spans across those steps: OM 934 at 115 kW (156 hp), 130 kW (177 hp), 155 kW (211 hp) and 170 kW (231 hp), and OM 936 at 175 kW (238 hp), 200 kW (272 hp) and 220 kW (299 hp). Mercedes does also print the span itself: the defence technical table carries a row headed “Power (min-max) (kW (hp))” reading 115-220 (156-299), the 2023 anniversary release says “from 115 to 220 kW (156 to 299 hp)”, and the international model page and the February 2025 UK product sheets state the ceiling as “engine outputs of up to 220 kW (299 hp)”. Those spans run across the seven steps; they are not a continuum, and no eighth rating sits between them in any document opened here. Torque runs 650, 750, 850 and 900 Nm on the four-cylinder and 1,000, 1,100 and 1,200 Nm on the six, every step held between 1,200 and 1,600 rpm. The 1,200 Nm shown for the 220 kW OM 936 is contested inside Mercedes’ own documentation: the engine table on the international model pages gives 1,400 Nm, in every locale checked, while the prose on that same page, the February 2025 UK product sheets, the defence technical table (900-1,200 Nm) and the 2016 UK brochure all give 1,200. This record follows the four documents rather than the one table and does not reconcile them. No gross combination weight is published for the Atego at all, and the gross vehicle weight moves between documents, which is why the field above is blank: the February 2025 UK product sheets give 7.5-15 t for both the distribution range (model 967 LHD/RHD, 20 versions) and the construction range (9 versions), on a WHEEL FORMULA row reading “4x2, 4x4”; the defence table gives 15.6-16.0 t for the 4x4 and 14 t for the Atego 1430; the August 2025 release gives 16 t for the Atego 1530 AF 4x4 equipment truck, which carries a payload of over 3.6 t; and a December 2018 release names a model-wide “6.5 to 16-tonne permissible gross vehicle weight class”. No band assembled across those documents is quoted as a Mercedes figure. Mercedes names “Euro VI” for this model and no lettered sub-stage. Transmission naming is not stable either: the international model page and the February 2025 UK product sheet call the standard automated gearbox PowerShift Advanced and attach no gear count to it, while the 2023 anniversary release, narrating the 2013 launch, and the defence 4x4 table call it PowerShift 3 with six and eight gears plus EcoRoll. A 9-speed appears in no current Atego specification table: the February 2025 UK distribution sheet says only “a wide array of manual and automatic transmissions”, the February 2025 UK construction sheet contains the words transmission, gearbox and PowerShift zero times, the model page says “a wide range of manual and automated” transmissions, and the defence technical table reads “6- or 8-speed manual transmissio / PowerShift 3 (automated) / Allison fully automatic transmission”. It does survive in current maker marketing text, so the claim above is bounded to specification tables: the 2016 UK brochure offers 6, 8 and 9 speeds, the “Choice of 6, 8, and 9-speed transmission” on the defence page sits in the same Core Technology marketing panel that puts an “Engine OM 460 LA” on the Atego, and the Mercedes-Benz Defence Trucks product-range page for the Atego carries both that line and “up to 9 speed transmissions for the drive systems are available”. None of those is carried into the field above. Cabs are four versions in three lengths, all 2,300 mm wide with 2,000 mm of interior width across an engine tunnel of 320 mm, a figure whose label is not settled: the February 2025 UK product sheets head the column “TUNNEL WIDTH (MM)”, while the 2016 UK brochure prints the same 320 mm for the Atego cabs without naming the dimension and, in its Antos half, gives 170 mm and 320 mm as engine tunnel heights with headroom over the tunnel of 1,460 mm and 1,310 mm respectively. The number is recorded with its column label and nothing is inferred from it. Cab dimensions: ClassicSpace S-cab 1,650 mm long, S-cab extended 1,830 mm, ClassicSpace L-cab and BigSpace L-cab 2,250 mm, interior height 1,510 mm except the BigSpace at 1,910 mm. The 2023 anniversary release attributes a single-piece bed with a seven-zone cold foam mattress to the large cab, which the sentence before it defines as the L cab in Classic or BigSpace form, so the bed belongs to both L-cabs rather than to the BigSpace alone. The 2016 UK brochure rates a three-stage engine brake at up to 235 kW and footnotes it “Available as standard from 9.5 t”, so it is not standard across the model: on the 6.5, 7.49 and 7.99 t Ategos of that brochure’s own overview it is not standard equipment. No current Mercedes document restates the 235 kW figure. The optional three-stage, wear-free High Performance Engine Brake at up to 300 kW depending on engine version is published both by the February 2025 UK construction sheet and by the international Atego construction model page; neither gives a rating for the ordinary engine brake. Mercedes publishes no maintenance interval for the truck on sale. The one figure that exists is historical, and it is written here inside its own frame: the anniversary release of 7 December 2023, under the heading “Second Generation with Highly Efficient Euro VI Engines” and narrating the 2013 rollout, says maintenance intervals “increased again to now 120,000 kilometers, a plus of 20 percent”. Neither the February 2025 UK sheets nor the international model pages restate it: the model pages offer only “maintenance interval forecasts” through the TruckLive service, and the UK sheets name TruckLive among the digital services without attaching any interval to it. Driver assistance is dated the same way. The December 2023 release announced it in the future tense: “From April 2024, the Atego will be equipped with the very latest safety assistance systems”, naming “the Active Brake Assist 6 (ABA6) emergency braking assistant and the Active Sideguard Assist 2 (ASGA 2) turning assistant”. No document opened here says what was actually built from that month onwards, so no fitment date is claimed. Read on 25 September 2026, both international model pages stand a generation further on: each opens an Active Brake Assist 6 Plus panel and an Active Sideguard Assist 3 panel, both footnoted “Standard in the EU, for certain vehicle configurations”, beside a Frontguard Assist panel, while the distribution page’s own lead sentence still reads “Driver assistance systems like Active Brake Assist 6 or Active Sideguard Assist 2”. The February 2025 UK sheets name Active Sideguard Assist 2 on both ranges and, on the distribution sheet, “the latest version of Active Brake Assist” and “the new Front Guard Assist” with no number, all under a footnote that assistance systems “can only support drivers”. Everything published in detail about the 4x4 comes from one document, the Mercedes-Benz Defence Trucks Atego 4x4 page, and that is a military configuration listed at 15.6-16.0 t with an S cab or crew cab and military-specific options: on that table alone the 4x4 carries a 2,500 mm vehicle width, a 3,260-4,760 mm wheelbase range, 600 mm fording capability rising to 800 mm optionally, gradeability up to 80%, maximum axle loads of 6.1 t at the front and 8 t on a single-tyred or 10 t on a twin-tyred rear axle, and seats for up to 7. No comparable table is published for the civilian all-wheel-drive chassis the February 2025 UK sheets cover at 7.5-15 t. The nameplate is older than everything above: the first generation arrived in 1998 at 6.5-15 t in 25 basic types, with the OM 904 LA and OM 906 LA of 4.25 and 6.37 litres delivering 90-205 kW (122-279 hp) and 470-1,300 Nm.