Mercedes Sprinter

All-electric cargo van should save tons in fuel costs.

Daimler will take a fleet of vehicles to the General Police Equipment Exhibition & Conference in Frankfurt, from a Smart ForTwo to an Arocs 8-wheeled truck.

Europe gets front-drive and manual options.

It's got a big new grille.

The vehicle in these shots may look like the current Sprinter van, but our spies claim the interior and exterior camo hide components from the next-gen commercial vehicle.

Mercedes is showing the ultimate customization capability of its Sprinter Chassis Cab models with this Extreme concept, designed by the folks at Renntech.

Mercedes-Benz adds the lower-cost Sprinter Worker to its commercial van lineup. The new $33,490 van debuts at the Chicago Auto Show.

Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen, and Audi announced details of their Takata inflator recalls, and the campaigns affect nearly 1.7 million vehicles in the US.

Mercedes-Benz is putting some marketing might behind Jurassic World and displaying several of its rugged models in the movie. The GLE-Class Coupe, G63 AMG 6X6, and Unimog all make appearances in the upcoming film.

Mercedes-Benz might be a little early with its April Fools' Day joke, but the Mercedes-AMG Sprinter63 S is still a ridiculously cool idea. With 503 horsepower from a twin-turbo 4.0-liter V8, it should drastically cut the wait time for deliveries.

The Mercedes-Benz Sprinter gets added capability for the 2015 model year with the addition of a four-wheel-drive system. We put the big van through its paces on and off road in beautiful British Columbia, Canada.

Mercedes-Benz is building a $500-million factory in Charleston, SC, to build the next-gen Sprinter domestically. Construction of the plant will begin in 2016, and it will cover 200 acres.

If you look at the Sprinter and wonder how Mercedes-Benz can possibly compete against locally produced commercial vehicles with a model built in Germany and shipped over the Atlantic, you're not alone. In fact, in order to mitigate the tariffs (but at the cost of added logistical expense), Mercedes builds the vans in Germany, takes them half apart again, ships them as kits and reassembles them in Ladson, South Carolina.

Line up any two comparable vehicles, and eople are going to want to race them. Need proof? In its latest track battle, Auto Express wants to know which commercial vehicle can lap a circuit faster – a Ford Transit or Mercedes-Benz Sprinter. Let's face it, neither of these European vans were ever meant to be near the track unless they are delivering a racecar and a ton of parts for a fun weekend, but it's massively fun to watch them give it a go anyway.

The truth is, we talk a lot about how great a Mercedes-Benz S-Class or a Bentley Mulsanne or a Rolls-Royce Phantom would be for a cross-country drive mainly because they're far, far sexier than the real kings of the long-distance haul: vans.

Mercedes-Benz is known for packing its cars with luxury features, but the rear passengers in some Sprinter vans are getting a shower that they don't expect. The rear air conditioning system is reportedly leaking in some models, and owners are boiling mad. A class-action lawsuit was filed in California alleging that Mercedes knew about the problem and didn't fix it.

If you've ever visited Germany, you know that Mercedes-Benz doesn't exactly carry the high-end cache in its homeland that it does in the US. While the Three-Pointed Star is still certainly known for its luxury sedans and sports cars, the brand also represents most of the taxis on the road, and its Sprinter vans make many of the deliveries. The upscale image in North America might be beneficial when trying to lure new buyers to a CLA-Class, but Merc is seeing pushback from some commercial buyers

Back in December, Mercedes-Benz announced a four-wheel-drive version of its endlessly charming Sprinter van (the European model is pictured above), but didn't make a mention of any plans for US market sales. Now, that's all changed, as the German automaker has confirmed that its Sprinter 4x4 will be available for US consumption, with the 2015 model hitting dealerships in the first quarter of next year. This means Mercedes will offer the only four-wheel-drive work van in the US.

According to the automaker, the van you see above is "The Mercedes Among MPVs." That statement is undoubtedly true, because it is indeed both a Mercedes-Benz and an MPV, but also because it's quite likely one of the more luxurious ways to move a bunch of people and their stuff from one place to another, regardless of where that may be.

I spend a lot of time trying to convince my friends and colleagues that the Mercedes-Benz Sprinter is the world's most perfect vehicle. Basically – in my eyes anyway – there is nothing it cannot do, and do well. And that point figures to be more true now that Daimler has introduced this all-wheel-drive Sprinter 4x4 model.