Mercedes Could Give The X-Class Pickup A 450bhp V8

Mercedes-Benz is preparing to drop a V8 into its X-Class pickup – but only if customers demand it.

The hilarious prospect of a European-sized luxury pickup with a twin-turbo V8 under the bonnet is apparently one green light away from reality. In turn, that means the essential engineering groundwork has already been done…

Head of the X-Class’s engineering team, Frank Schumacher, has told Australia’s Drive that a V8 is perfectly possible. He’s quoted as saying:

“If customers want more power… we react to customers’ wishes.

“If there will be wishes after the launch of the vehicle that says we need to have V8 then probably we will put in a V8, but that’s always a response on customer request.

“We surely can make it happen, it’s just a question of what V8 you want to put in. You can [even] put the six-litre [V12] in, yeah, but so far there is no plan.”

He stressed that high-performance trucks would typically be limited to the North American market, and that if customer demand really did get high enough to see it built, it wouldn’t use an AMG-spec version of any of its available V8s. Instead, a detuned version with just 450bhp or so would have to suffice. Ah well.

The X-Class, which right now only uses four-cylinder engines, will be given a V6 diesel in most markets towards the end of this year.

Source: Drive