Good night, sweet prince, we hardly knew ye.
Mercedes-Benz
If you live in the US and don't pay particularly close attention to car and truck models that aren't sold here, you could easily be forgiven for not knowing that Mercedes-Benz makes a pickup truck. It's called the X-Class, and it's actually pretty cool.
Unfortunately, it may not be long for this world if a report published Tuesday by Automotive News Europe is to be believed. The reason for the possible demise of the X-Class is the current worldwide sales slump for new vehicles.
The X-Class, being kind of a niche product — and a badge-engineered one at that — is an easy target for cost savings. Yep, we said badge-engineered. The X-Class is based on a Nissan pickup (that we also don't get in the US) called the Navara. Obviously, Mercedes being what it is, it changes a ton of stuff, so it's not quite as bad as say, Volkswagen rebadging a Grand Caravan as the Routan.
In any case, the X-Class (which has been around since 2017) hasn't exactly been flying off of dealer lots. Automotive News Europe pegs the global sales for the model at just 16,700 units. By comparison, Mercedes shifted around 15,000 S-Class models in 2018 in the US alone.
When you consider that the S-Class costs more than twice as much as an X-Class (based on German market prices) and sedan sales are in the proverbial terlet here, the model's discontinuation starts to make some real sense.
Now, we'll shed no tears for the X-Class if and when it goes away, but we do like the idea of a Mercedes pickup. We just need to convince the folks back in Stuttgart to do some really wild stuff like make a Jeep Gladiatoresque version of the G-wagen and sell it in America.
Good night, sweet prince, we hardly knew ye.
Mercedes-Benz
If you live in the US and don't pay particularly close attention to car and truck models that aren't sold here, you could easily be forgiven for not knowing that Mercedes-Benz makes a pickup truck. It's called the X-Class, and it's actually pretty cool.
Unfortunately, it may not be long for this world if a report published Tuesday by Automotive News Europe is to be believed. The reason for the possible demise of the X-Class is the current worldwide sales slump for new vehicles.
The X-Class, being kind of a niche product — and a badge-engineered one at that — is an easy target for cost savings. Yep, we said badge-engineered. The X-Class is based on a Nissan pickup (that we also don't get in the US) called the Navara. Obviously, Mercedes being what it is, it changes a ton of stuff, so it's not quite as bad as say, Volkswagen rebadging a Grand Caravan as the Routan.
In any case, the X-Class (which has been around since 2017) hasn't exactly been flying off of dealer lots. Automotive News Europe pegs the global sales for the model at just 16,700 units. By comparison, Mercedes shifted around 15,000 S-Class models in 2018 in the US alone.
When you consider that the S-Class costs more than twice as much as an X-Class (based on German market prices) and sedan sales are in the proverbial terlet here, the model's discontinuation starts to make some real sense.
Now, we'll shed no tears for the X-Class if and when it goes away, but we do like the idea of a Mercedes pickup. We just need to convince the folks back in Stuttgart to do some really wild stuff like make a Jeep Gladiatoresque version of the G-wagen and sell it in America.
