Mercedes Planned to Rebadge Nissan's New Pickups
The term “luxury pickup truck” is a strange one that manages to make U.S. auto companies fistfuls of cash.
Maybe that’s why Daimler was seriously considering a project that would have seen Nissan’s Titan and Frontier re-badged as Mercedes-Benz products. According to a report from Road & Track, a plan to do exactly that has been shelved. With plans crumbled and lying on the floor, it sounds like Infiniti, Nissan’s in-house premium brand, is plotting to offer a premium pickup of its own.
“We know about their pickup, but as long as they price it more enthusiastically than ours, we don’t think it will impact our plans,” an anonymous source told the magazine.
Had things continued, plans would have likely seen both vehicles on the market by 2016, roughly one year after a second-generation Titan debuts.
Most of the exterior characteristics would have been held in common except for a different front fascia and badges. The real difference would have been on the inside where Mercedes would assume domain over choosing cabin styling and materials to better suit its buyers.
Mercedes was even deep enough into the project before it was killed that its engineers already began working on tweaking NVH levels in the trucks. The chassis and all-wheel drive system would have been shares. So would the suspension, although Mercedes would have re-tuned it.
Problems rose when Daimler wanted the vehicles to be engineered to accommodate a wider range of engines than Nissan had planned. Demands to engineer the Frontier to be offered as a hybrid and plug-in hybrid also served to stymie plans.
[Source: Road & Track]
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Luke is an energetic automotive journalist who spends his time covering industry news and crawling the internet for the latest breaking story. When he isn't in the office, Luke can be found obsessively browsing used car listings, drinking scotch at his favorite bar and dreaming of what to drive next, though the list grows a lot faster than his bank account. He's always on <A title="@lukevandezande on Twitter" href="http://twitter.com/lukevandezande">Twitter</A> looking for a good car conversation. Find Luke on <A title="@lukevandezande on Twitter" href="http://twitter.com/lukevandezande">Twitter</A> and <A title="Luke on Google+" href="http://plus.google.com/112531385961538774338?rel=author">Google+</A>.
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The problem with Mercedes making luxury pickups is that they will have to go somewhere. Yuppies buy pickups they will never use and then they get tired of them. They have to go somwhere and very few people, including myself, who depend on a pickup are going to buy used luxury pickups that cost more than a new ford or dodge. Mercedes was smart to pull their head out of the cave and realize they didn't stand a chance against the American trucks. Caddy makes a nice yuppie truck as does chevy and dodge. Ford makes a Raptor that is red hot. Perhaps Mercedes could find a way in the niche market of street legal Baja trucks like Ford did with the raptor. If mercedes wanted to get into the pickup market, why not make a nice small diesel pickup for the working man. The rich guys would see rugged individuals hunting, fishing and working in these smaller diesel trucks and would want to be cool like them. They could spring for the AMG version. :) I love Mercedes, they saved me from having to buy a soccer mom car with their wagon. I run an older Landcruiser, a scion and have a K2500 GMC for hunting and gathering fire wood along with trips to the landfill. Seems like everybody has 4 cars in Montana. Anyway, I think that Mercedes should concentrate on getting diesel cars that are affordable into the US market. It's going to be hard because of the unscientific, feel good politics and the lobby, but it would be worth it. Mercedes has gone from luxury only to slutting themselves out so why not sell a ton of cars and keep the standards? Rant over. Long live the Auto Union cars.
Mercedes have been going down in quality for a long time. They're not the only ones , it's endemic to all of the auto industry, All flash, Little substance.. Do you honestly beleive they'll ever build another bulletproof automobile like the 123 platform 300D or the 300SD of the same vintage? Do you think any car they build now will receive a million mile badge? or even a 500,000 mile badge? I don't. Plastic doesn't last that long. It's unfortunate but MB has changed their whole design philosophy from long lasting & rebuildable to BIC lighter throwaways.