The Mercedes-Benz Metris will no longer be sold in the U.S. after 2023, ending the van’s brief run in the United States. The midsize Metris debuted in 2015 in America, but in the seven years since then Mercedes-Benz managed to sell only about 60,000 models. Many, if not most, of those Metris vans were delivered to the USPS, according to Automotive News.
The Metris just couldn’t crawl out of the shadow of the popular Mercedes-Benz Sprinter, nor that of its rivals from other carmakers like the Ram ProMaster and Ford Transit Connect. Mercedes-Benz dealers claim that the van’s size failed to make it a fit for commercial fleets. It was too small to be as useful as the bigger Sprinter, and too big to be considered practical like the smaller Ford Transit.
The Metris also failed to find an audience among buyers looking for passenger vans because of its reportedly low quality interior. Dealers even said certain Metris models didn’t deserve to wear the Mercedes badge. Ouch.
But not every Mercedes-Benz has to be an S-Class. That’s just an association Mercedes has fostered over the years in the U.S., while markets abroad include mundane cars from the carmaker. Of course, there are foreign commercial fleets full of M-B vans and foreign militaries which use barebones G-Class models.
The Metris was supposed to boost the sale of M-B’s commercial vans as a smaller sibling to the Sprinter, but never caught on. From 2015 through 2022, the Sprinter outsold the Metris by four to one.
Now, Mercedes has told dealers that the four-cylinder gasoline engine used in the commercial Metris and Sprinter will be discontinued. The I4 gasoline engines used by the commercial vans came from Nissan and were built in Tennessee. Since that production is pivoting to EVs, the engine is being phased out. So, the Metris is on the chopping block.
The Sprinter isn’t going away, but will only be sold with a diesel engine after 2023. The loss of its gasoline engine isn’t a big deal since dealers claim diesel-powered models make up 75 percent of Sprinter sales. With the eSprinter also coming, there’s neither reason to keep the I4 gasoline engine nor Metris alive.
The Sprinter will carry the commercial van torch for Mercedes-Benz all by itself in America. Unlike the Metris, the Sprinter has been well-received in the U.S., which is the commercial van’s second-largest market behind Germany.
The only thing left for the Mercedes-Benz Metris is to fulfill a multi-year contract of 30,000 models to the USPS, and when that’s done the Metris is out. Goodbye, Metris. We hardly knew you.
