Truck YeahThe trucks are good!While sitting in traffic on California State Route 17 between Santa Cruz and San Jose, a member of the car enthusiast Facebook group Oppositetalk named Diego Imprenta spotted a bizarre mechanical creature that appears to be some combination of Ford Super Duty and Mercedes Sprinter.
“This was interesting!” reads Imprenta’s caption accompanying his photos of the mysterious beast. I agree, this is interesting—mostly because I really don’t know what’s going on here.
Clearly, that’s a Ford bed, and I’m thinking the chassis likely comes from a Super Duty, since the image above shows an “inner C” end forging that’s characteristic of a solid front axle, whereas both a Sprinter and an F-150 would have independent front suspensions. Plus, those eight-lug hubs are exactly what you’d find on a Super Duty. And there are of course Sprinter flatbed trucks, but this ain’t it.
There’s obviously been some bodywork done to the bedsides to help them match up with the character lines on the cab. It actually looks quite good:
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That cab appears to have come from a first-gen, pre-2007 Mercedes/Dodge Sprinter chassis cab. The back of that cab doesn’t quite look stock—I wonder if the owner did a bit of massaging to flatten out the outside edges:
The powertrain situation has me confused. If this mechanical contraption sits on a Super Duty chassis, like it appears to, it almost certainly has a Super Duty powertrain under the hood. And that brings me to my question: Does the Sprinter even have a big enough engine bay to house that motor?
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One of the main benefits of the Mercedes/Dodge Sprinter van is that it’s got a short nose, meaning its overall length remains reasonable while the rear area for cargo is fairly substantial. But this also put the stock engine fairly far back into the cab area. You would think that, for any engine to fit in this tight tunnel, it and its accessories would need to have been designed for that packaging environment from the onset.
Did whoever built this Super Sprinter really go through all the effort of repackaging the Ford’s engine components to fit into a tight Sprinter engine bay? If so, consider me beyond impressed.
Actually, I’ll be impressed even if there’s a tiny Geo Metro engine under the hood, because this thing looks awesome, and in addition to providing the many benefits of a cab over-ish design, the photo above shows a ridiculously high seating position and what looks like decent headroom.
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It’s strange, but in a good way.
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