Mercedes has one of the most diverse product lineups in the automotive world. At one end of the scale you can buy buses, semi-trucks, vans and pickups with a three-pointed star on the nose, and at the other you’ve got hypercars, sports cars and high-end luxury sedans, all wearing the same branding.
And for a while Mercedes even tried to combine some of those disparate themes. Remember the X-Class? Built for just three years at the tail end of the last decade, the luxury-themed pickup failed to find buyers and was quickly dropped. Buyers were reluctant to pay a premium for a vehicle that was basically a re-badged Nissan Navara, and not a true Mercedes pickup.
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Maybe the X-Class would have had more success it it was more like this mutant S-Class pickup. We’re not sure when it was converted into a commercial vehicle or by whom, but we do know it started life as a W221 S350 with dreams of ferrying important businessman around to big city banks, but these days the only cargo it’s suitable for carrying is a few pigs and hay bales down to the local market.
We’re wondering whether it might have once been a hearse – what do you think? Anyway, the advert on Yahoo auctions doesn’t give away much in terms of details, but it does tell us that donor car’s 268 hp (272 PS) 3.5-liter V6 has covered only 17,000 km (10,600 miles) from new and that the asking price is 6 million yen or just over $41,000 at current exchange rates.
Though referred to as a 2010 model in the ad copy, this pickup features the pre-facelift front end that means it narrowly missed out on the redesigned lower bumper and tweaked headlights. But neither pre- or post-facelift versions of the S-Class came with G-Class rear lamps, as this one does. The interior looks to be in fine shape and would give you no reason to think you were in anything other than a regular S350 – until you looked behind you, that is. So what do you think: this or a Lincoln Blackwood?
