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| Boasting a wrestler-in-a-suit good looks, the new Sprinter is set to continue in its best-selling predecessor's footsteps. |
I WENT to a wedding of a very popular model in Düsseldorf the other day.
It was not your usual ceremony, but part of one of those conveyor belt weddings where a union is formalised every 90 seconds.
In keeping with the assembly line theme, the weddings were hosted in a large factory and the model whose union I came to see was still but a shapely profile far down the line.
As you can imagine, there were lots of hipsters sporting interesting facial hair, tats peeking from collars and probably studs poking in anatomically improbable places too.
You could tell they were hipsters by how they managed to wear those Farmer Brown bibs without looking like total dorks, or presenters of children’s programmes.
Even our guide, a balding gent in his late 50s, rocked a handlebar ’tache with tortoiseshell glasses.
But many as the hipsters were — and there were 1 200 on this shift according to the ’tached guide — one part of the factory held more robots than humans.
It felt a little bit menacing, watching these robots puff and wheeze in their cages, twirling big slabs of
freshly-pressed steel in a ponderous but precise ballet, here sparking a few hundred spotwelds, there extruding a few litres of glue, each task done in less than 100 seconds.
freshly-pressed steel in a ponderous but precise ballet, here sparking a few hundred spotwelds, there extruding a few litres of glue, each task done in less than 100 seconds.
I imagined if these robots had acted in I, Robot, Will Smith would have been turned into road pizza halfway into the movie, instead of escaping to save humanity from the terrible logic of artificial intelligence.
Back with the hipsters at the mass wedding, the union I got to witness was beautiful to behold — their parts coming together at a slow walking pace to form a bigger whole — her gorgeously curved hull in midnight black, his V6 diesel engine in steel grey, their new, united form ready to send power to all four wheels through an athletic seven-speed auto box.
By now, even the most romantic Wheels reader should realise this was no ordinary mass wedding. But then, the millions of Mercedes-Benz Sprinters that come off the line at the Düsseldorf plant aren’t your ordinary panelvan either.
With over 3,5 million sold since the first Sprinter was built in the summer of ’95, the Sprinter is the best selling premium van in the West, selling more and faster than even the original van, the Ford Transit.
HIPSTERS CAN TAKE A BOW
After many factory tours, I am of the view all those hipsters working the assembly line can take credit for a lot of the Sprinter’s stellar sales.
Watching the teams add the finishing touches to the bare-boned Sprinters on the assembly line, I was reminded of champion pit crews working on a race car. Or master boat builders shaping a yacht.
Because the Sprinters I drove were a few hundred kilograms too light to qualify for lower import duties on commercial vehicles, Merc gave these Sprinters destined for South Africa a heavy wooden floor under the metal floor to add to the gross vehicle weight and qualify for the lower tax bracket.
Of course the first thing any local fleet owner did was to lift the metal floor and ditch the wood to gain more payload.
In my case, reassembling the floor took two days to remove. I remembered my grazed knuckles and tongue blistered from swearing as I watched the hipster teams dance past each other in well-practised two-steps, wielding big, whirring tools like master artists wield their paint brushes to assemble in effortless minutes what took me days. Like the hand-crafted Bugatti on page 4, the craftsmanship of these hipsters shines in the Sprinter.
In my case, reassembling the floor took two days to remove. I remembered my grazed knuckles and tongue blistered from swearing as I watched the hipster teams dance past each other in well-practised two-steps, wielding big, whirring tools like master artists wield their paint brushes to assemble in effortless minutes what took me days. Like the hand-crafted Bugatti on page 4, the craftsmanship of these hipsters shines in the Sprinter.
Which may explain why many Sprinter drivers, myself included, tend to refer to our vans as females.
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| The latest Sprinter is all about the driver's comfort. |
MANY NOOKS FOR STUFF
Of course the new Sprinters are light years from the powerful but bare boxes on wheels that I drove all over southern Africa in the mid noughties.
Back then, if you dropped the pen with which you were taking down directions, the only way to retrieve it from the floor half a metre below your fingertips was to stop, get out and fish the pen from the dark recesses behind the sprung seat. If one did not specify and pay a steep price for a roof bin or cupholder, all you got was an excellent drivetrain under a box on wheels.
But Merc listened to the drivers and all the subsequent Sprinter models now boast nooks where other vans don’t even have crannies.
They also boast all the clever fleet management software developed for the Daimler Group’s big trucks to provide drivers with ways to save on diesel and tyres.
What’s more, the new Sprinter is only the second Mercedes-Benz after the S-Class (which starts at R1,5 million in South Africa) to get Merc’s new artificial intelligence called MBUX — for Mercedes-Benz User Experience. This tells you better than anything else where the Sprinter fits into the Daimler Group’s pecking order. Europeans will get to drive the 2019 Sprinter in June, with eight sizes and 1 700 combinations of roofs, doors and windows to order, prices starting at €20 000 and going as high as €100 000 if you go for the long wheel base, all-wheel drive, recreational vehicle with full glass roof.
We van men in “Seffrica” and “Stryljuh” will have to wait another year, and prices are not yet fixed as we await for some more Ramaphosa magic to settle the rand.
Daimler trucks media spokesperson Sibusiso Mkwanaze however predicted prices will remain competitive against competing vans.
WHAT ABOUT SPECIALS?
While the current model Sprinter may not have the artificial intelligence also found in the S-Class, judging by sales fleet buyers still deem the 2018 models to be packed with value, as both a fourth consecutive record year in worldwide sales and 50% of the local long distance taxi market show.
WHO SHOULD GET THIS VAN?
Business owners, bakkie builders and taxi operators obviously, but having packed mattresses, gazebos, braai-stands, big speakers, an inflatable boat and even the (canvas) kitchen sink in a few Sprinters for those ultimate family roadtrips, I would also urge every dad out there to also consider becoming a Van Man.
For me, it was not the commanding view from that high seat, or the fantastic consumption from any of the powerful diesel engines, or all that space in the back that got me hooked on Sprinters. Most vans offer at least two of these traits.
I got hooked on the power trip I got each time I gently piled on 330Nm from just over idle to pass the guy in the doublecab, raising a wry eyebrow in sympathy at his plight as I sailed majestically past. For in a Sprinter, you are in the working man’s S-class, in which the parts that were united in Düsseldorf add up to far more than their sum.
• Full disclosure: Mercedes-Benz South Africa sponsored Alwyn Viljoen’s visit to the world launch of the new Sprinter van in Germany.
