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( 4UMF NEWS ) Mercedes-Benz To Offer A Pickup Truck: For rhinestone cowboys, Mercedes-Benz is going to produce a pickup truck. Nissan and Mercedes parent Daimler announced they are jointly developing a double-cab 1-ton pickup, which will roughly be based on a midsize Nissan pickup that isn't sold in the U.S., the NP300 Navara. Mercedes' rendering of the truck shows a sleek, SUV-like front end with a pickup bed on the back. "The Mercedes-Benz pickup will share some of the architecture with the all-new Nissan NP300, but it will be engineered and designed by Daimler to meet the specific needs of its customers," Daimler says in a statement. "The vehicle will have all of Mercedes Benz's distinctive characteristics and features." Nissan, which says it's the world's second-largest maker of 1-ton pickups, was picked as a partner as a way of reducing development time. Nissan introduced the latest version of the NP300 Navara last year, with a lower roof and higher ground clearance. In the U.S., it sells a similarly sized Frontier midsize truck, but the automaker insists that it's different than the NP300. The Mercedes pickup will be primarily aimed at Europe, Australia, South Africa and Latin America, and not the U.S. and much of Asia. But it's being weighed for the U.S. "We said to Stuttgart, 'We are open, and let us assess the market,'" Steve Cannon, CEO of Mercedes-Benz USA, told Automotive News. Mercedes is based in Stuttgart, Germany. The Mercedes-Benz 1-ton pickup will be built at the Nissan/Renault plant in Cordoba, Argentina, and in Barcelona, Spain. Cordoba is likely to produce about 70,000 of the pickups, along with Nissan and Renault models, while Barcelona will be able to produce 120,000, Daimler and Nissan said. Source

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