It?s been a couple of banner years for advancements in the commercial-van market, and just when you thought the helter-skelter, shoot-first-ask-questions-later world of cargo-hauling work vehicles was ready to take a breather, Mercedes-Benz drops a hat trick of van news on already shellshocked fleet buyers. First came Mercedes-Benz?s 2015 announcement that it is spilling $500 million to build a new factory in Charleston, South Carolina, where it will assemble Sprinter and Metris vans from scratch here on U.S. soil. (Currently, to beat the 25 percent ?chicken tax,? all Sprinters are built outside the United States, broken down into subassemblies, shipped stateside, and put back together here.) Then, in July of this year, M-B unveiled the Metris Worker van in Passenger ($30,990) and Cargo ($29,945) variants, which are bare-bones, lower-cost models of the Metris mid-size van. Like its big brother, the Mercedes-Benz Sprinter Worker, the Metris Worker is aimed at buyers who value utility over creature comforts. Finally, Mercedes reported that the Metris cargo just posted a blistering sub-eight-minute lap of the Nürburgring Nordschleife. READ MORE ??
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