When Mercedes Made A Pickup Truck

0 Comments | 07 Feb 2024

There is a certain type of car associated with Mercedes-Benz, of the type that luxury chauffeurs prefer and that business executives enjoy riding in the back seat of.

Cars such as the S-Class and the E-Class exude sophistication, style, and technological features far in advance of other manufacturers and use this to provide the most comfortable ride for passengers.

However, Mercedes-Benz has also experimented with trying to make upmarket vehicles in some rather unexpected classifications.

Some, like the luxury supermini A-Class, became tremendous successes, albeit after some difficulties such as infamously failing the elk test and having to spend 300m Deutschmarks to fix the suspension and electronic stability control.

One of the most unusual cars to ever feature the Mercedes badge was the X-Class, a luxury pickup truck first sold in 2017 and marketed heavily as the first “premium” model of its kind.

However, the public reception to the X-Class started badly and did not improve.

The first problem is that most upmarket pickup trucks tended to be commercial failures, with the only exceptions being the top-of-the-range versions of the already-successful Ford F-150. 

The second problem was that the X-Class was not built by Mercedes but instead was produced in Barcelona by Nissan, as part of an agreement between Mercedes and the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance.

This also meant that outside of the top-of-the-line models, the engine powering the X-Class was made by Renault, something that particularly bothered some observers.

Finally, it shared the chassis, some parts of the interior and some elements of the bodywork with the Nissan Navara, a very capable midsize pickup truck but also one that very noticeably was not a Mercedes.

As a result, its driving characteristics were exceedingly unlike any other Mercedes, being noisier to drive and less comfortable than the Volkswagen Amarok or the Ford Ranger. 

Because of all of this, the X-Class was somewhat unsuccessful and was discontinued in 2020 after just two full years on the market.