Mercedes May Be Closer To Entering Pickup Market Than You Think - Who Should Be Worried?

Seems so counterintuitive but their work vans have done really well.

I'll buy one to move drywall. LOL. Benz...aims to be Toyota.

Same as my initial thoughts about a M-B 4-dr pickup. But then Honda re-introduced a revised Ridgeline - how many of those with be purchased with the top trim package & all the interior content - leading to a fairly entry-level luxury car pricing scheme. And the new Ridgeline sheds much of the rugged for a much cleaner upscale product for the active professional in changing urban surroundings.

A GLC/GLE-based 4-dr pickup might be pretty enticing...especially if paired with equally enticing engines. This would be the luxury answer to a question no one asked...but how many Chevy Avalanche owners dont want something like that again?

Nissan. Especially their higher end pickup models.

Nobody should be worried.

Mercedes should be worried. They run the risk of looking pretty silly doing this. At the same time, they run the risk of looking brilliant by taking this risk. But, if many know it's (possibly) essentially a disguised Nissan, that may be it's failing right there. The passenger version runs the risk of having rappers and Kardashians distastefully blinging them up and further tarnishing the image.

cidf: I was going to say the same thing minus the last sentence. Thank you for adding that in. It did not hit my radar!

If the pickup truck is "Sprinter" based, then Ford, GM, Dodge, Nissan should be worried. They have all but abandoned the "work van" segment, leaving it all to Mercedes (the Fiat, sorry Dodge Ram Van is so awful its not a competitor). Trades people who have Mercedes Sprinters, love them and it would be an easy conquest sale to get them to buy a Sprinter-based pickup.

If the pickup is ML350-based (ala the Ridgeline) then only Mercedes itself has to worry, because the only people buying them are those customers who otherwise would have purchased a GL450 or ML350.

Anybody that makes high end pickups should be worried. They may share development costs with Nissan but please believe they will have the MB 4wd system. Let them brand it as a part of the GWagen family and they'll sell all they can make. Look what happened with the 6X6. It will cost an obscene amount of money and it will sell.
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Yeah I suppose a rebodied Nissan Third-World pickup with twenny-fous an lotsa bling, an yo at double the price will be perfect for wannabe ballers, low-rent rapppers, drug dealers, welfare cheaters, and pimps like the rest of Mercedes' low hanging fruit. Mercedes found a way to make money by going ghetto and this will be the most egregious example of that.

Darringer you seem to have an obsession with the ghetto. Apparently you also think that anything black people like makes that particular thing ghetto. Examine yourself and think before you type that bs. Plenty of other races like big wheels. If rappers, pimps and Hallers were the only ones that liked these thing companies would go out of business. Just because you have a few bucks does not mean you are above anyone else. Get real dude!

I call automotive Kardashianitis as it see it.

Their plan is to base their product on Nissan. Given that Nissan is laughable in the pickup market for lackluster quality, sketchy durability, and problematic reliability and that Nissan thinks restyling old garbage make the product all new, and we can infer that Mercedes is on the crack pipe. Yes the Megane was an expedient platform to use for their FWD aspirations, but their reliance on Nissan/Renault has the power to do to Mercedes what Mercedes did to Chrysler. I'm all for it!

It doesn't seem that far fetched to me seeing as the current truck market has gone up in price and levels of luxury.