TEUTONIC TRUCK
When news broke in 2015 that Mercedes-Benz was planning to enter the booming dual cab ute market, many an eyebrow was raised. Prevailing wisdom said that the Stuttgart-based car maker is a prestige brand and hence has no business messing about in the muddy wheel tracks of the dual cab 4x4 market.
What this view failed to acknowledge, however, is that Germany’s oldest and most famous luxury car maker has a long history of making rugged and reliable commercial vehicles. There’s a reason the Australian Defence Force use Benz G-Wagens, and it’s not because of their leather.
Of course, the X-Class also generated headlines for other reasons as well; principally because it wasn’t an all-new model as such, but a re-engineered version of a Nissan Navara. That really got the purists fuming, but Benz’s logic was hard to fault; a ground-up development of an all-new model costs billions of dollars and takes at least five years, where a partnership gets a car to market sooner, and at a lower cost.
Still, with Ford’s Ranger and Toyota’s HiLux regarded
