2024 Mercedes-Benz Sprinter 2500 AWD Off-Road Review: Did We Have to Turn Back?
We said we’d go until forced to turn back. We never did turn back.
“And no moving stories,” warned Christian Seabaugh, our long-term fleet coordinator, as we wrapped up the story-planning meeting for our yearlong Mercedes-Benz Sprinter 2500 AWD van. “Any time we get a long-term van, all people do is help their friends move. You’ve got more interesting plans for the Sprinter. No moving stories. I hate them.”
The Moving Story You Aren’t Going to Hear
I agree with Seabaugh, which is why this update is about taking our all-wheel-drive Sprinter for some semi-serious off-roading, and not about helping my friend transport his extensive and expensive garden railroad train collection to his new house. No siree, Bob, not one word about how we stuffed the Sprinter from back seat to back doors with 2,600 pounds of large-scale model trains my friend deemed too fragile to entrust to the movers. I won’t even tell you that the weight dropped the Sprinter’s ride height 2 inches at both axles, making our van-on-stilts much easier to get into and out of.
Maybe I’m doing a disservice, because this little adventure did prove the volume-versus-capacity advantage of a van. Shifting his ton-and-a-quarter of model trains would have taken at least two trips with our Chevy pickup, with everything out in the open. I’d like to tell you that with the Sprinter, we loaded up in the cool of evening, got a good night’s sleep, and took off at dawn’s early light, but I won’t. No moving stories.
You’re probably curious about how the Sprinter’s little 208-hp 2.0-liter turbodiesel did with all that weight. Sorry, but I won’t tell you it had to rev higher to accelerate to highway speeds but otherwise didn’t feel burdened by the load the way a gasoline engine does. Nor will I share my fuel economy on the mostly 85-mile uphill run from Burbank to Tehachapi, which is too bad, because it was an impressive 18.7 mpg. No moving stories. I promised Seabaugh. [Gold, report to my office immediately.—Ed.]
A Sprinter Off-Road
Since I can’t tell you that story, I’ll tell you this one: Seabaugh and I took the Sprinter up to an off-highway vehicle area, which, coincidentally, is on the way to Tehachapi. This is where you say “Tehachapi? Why would you mention Tehachapi? We don’t know anything about Tehachapi or moving your friend’s model trains there, because you didn’t write anything about moving.” Thanks, friends. You always have my back.
As you know from our introduction, the Sprinter AWD is filling in as ranch truck, which involves some degree of off-road driving. My expectations were low: I don’t expect a van to off-road like a pickup with a low-range transfer case, but a ranch truck does need to deal with loose surfaces and uneven terrain. Our plan (“our” being seasoned off-roader Seabaugh in our long-term Jeep Wagoneer—not exactly a Wrangler Rubicon—and photographer William Walker) was to find a moderately challenging trail. Nothing that required aggressive tires and lockers all around, but something you couldn’t drive in a Civic. We figured we’d go as far as we could until the Sprinter got stuck, then free it with the recovery ramps and/or the Wagoneer and turn back.
Spoiler alert: The Sprinter surprised the daylights out of all of us.
Look, Ma, No Buttons
The 2024 Sprinter has a new all-wheel-drive setup similar to the 4Matic system Mercedes uses in its cars and SUVs. Previously, Sprinters had a button to engage all-wheel drive or an optional four-wheel-drive setup; now everything is automatic, just as in your run-of-the-mill crossover. As the pics make obvious, the Sprinter has crazy ground clearance: a nominal 8 inches under the differential pumpkin, but most of the body stands 18 inches off the ground. The tires, however, are city-friendly load-carriers. Normal pressure is 52 psi front and 70 rear, and we aired all four down to 40 psi in the hopes of avoiding punctures and getting a bit more traction.
The off-road park has a nice little practice section with three hill climbs of varying severity running downhill from the parking lot. “Let’s just go for the hardest one,” Seabaugh said. (My great-grandmother would have loved Seabaugh. Her favorite expression was “Tuchas aoyf tish,” which is Yiddish for “ass on the table,” as in stop farting about and let’s get this done.)
With Seabaugh watching the tail end and WW (pronounced “Dub-Dub,” by the way) eyeing the front though his camera—little comfort, since if the van did scrape earth, he’d take at least 400 photos before telling me to stop—I eased into the descent, foot on the brake since there’s no hill descent control. The Sprinter tiptoed down, its careful progress punctuated by the chatter of antilock brakes.
“You weren’t even close,” Seabaugh said, wearing the nearest thing to a grin that ever crosses his face. “What? Oh, yeah, you were fine,” said WW, as if he hadn’t forgotten he was supposed to be preventing me from tearing up the Sprinter’s undersides. Honestly, Dubz, you had us all fooled.
Climbing back up, the Sprinter just dug in and went. When the tires started to slip, I just treated it like a crossover: Wait, feed in a little more throttle, then wait some more and let 4Matic figure it out. Mostly the Sprinter just kept moving, though if traction got skimpy enough, stability control would poop on our party by returning the diesel engine to idle. Turning off traction control and letting the tires spin a little turned out to be the solution, and I kept that screen at the ready on the center display.
Oh, My Aching Neck
Out on the trail, the van was … fine. Surprisingly fine. Traction and axle articulation were never a problem; whatever the Wagoneer made it over, the Sprinter followed, often with a lot less drama. We thought the mile-long wheelbase would give us trouble, but this is where the Sprinter’s stratospheric ride height comes in handy. We crested one rock where I could barely get one of my fists between the bodywork and the dirt, but the Sprinter never scraped. There were only two or three occasions when it threatened to get stuck due to a lack of traction, and all it took to get it moving was turning off traction control and feeding in a little more throttle. I never had to back up and try a different line—not once.
The biggest problem was the constant body sway, exaggerated by the Sprinter’s tall height and second-story driving position. We talk about head toss in some off-roaders; in the Sprinter, it’s torso toss, and there’s nothing to be done about it. Even if you crawl at the speed of an arthritic ant, uneven terrain pitches the Sprinter like a sloop in a storm. Forty minutes into our trail ride, with another hour still to go, my neck was killing me. (I still haven’t ruled out the possibility of a worker’s comp claim.)
And You Can See, Too
WW mostly avoided riding in the Motor Yacht Sprinter, which I hope was because of the storm-tossed body and not my conversational skills, but when he did ride with me, he pointed out another advantage: “Your visibility is great,” he said. “You’re up so high and the nose is so short, you can practically see right in front of you. In the Jeep, the hood is in the way.”
I cursed myself for not articulating this thought, but Dubz was right, damn him. I never once needed to engage the Sprinter’s front-facing parking camera. With the tall seat, short hood, and steering axle by my feet, guiding the Sprinter off-road is almost as easy as walking, except walking doesn’t make your neck ache. One just has to keep an eye on the side mirrors and swing the turns wide to avoid running a back wheel off the edge of the trail. I expected the Sprinter to be unwieldy on narrow trails, and although it did bump its tall roof on quite a bit of the local flora, the van was easier to guide down the trail than most plus-size pickups I’ve driven.
At what point did we turn back? We didn’t. The Sprinter made it right to the end of the trail (which, thankfully for my battered neck, smoothed out over the last couple of miles). It has exactly the capability one needs for a ranch truck—or for camping at way-off-the-beaten-path campsites. (Just be sure to tie down your stuff, lest it get flung hither and thither by the swaying body.) It seems the AWD Sprinter will tackle any terrain a pickup could climb through without resorting to low range.
Two months into our yearlong test, the Mercedes-Benz Sprinter is proving to be an excellent pickup truck. It’s not a bad moving van, either, but we won’t talk about that. I made a promise.
For More On Our Long-Term 2024 Mercedes-Benz Sprinter:
After a two-decade career as a freelance writer, Aaron Gold joined MotorTrend’s sister publication Automobile in 2018 before moving to the MT staff in 2021. Aaron is a native New Yorker who now lives in Los Angeles with his spouse, too many pets, and a cantankerous 1983 GMC Suburban.
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