Mercedes-Benz X220 vs Mercedes-Benz X250

What's the difference?

If there was a feeling at Stuttgart that any vehicle displaying a three-pointed star could do no wrong, the X-Class should be a wake-up call. It's a vehicle that appears to have drawn a line in the sand in terms of what people are prepared to accept as an authentic Mercedes-Benz.

Sure, the fastest and cheapest way into the booming dual-cab ute segment was to piggy-back an existing player, in this case the D23 Nissan Navara, as M-B has a tech-share agreement with the huge Nissan-Renault-Mitsubishi alliance. The Navara/X-Class relationship is similar to Ford Ranger/Mazda BT-50 or Isuzu D-Max/Holden Colorado.

But we are talking Mercedes-Benz here. Given the high esteem in which the German marque is held and its pre-eminent off-road heritage, with icons like the Unimog and G-Wagen, the end result has fallen short of understandably high expectations. It's even built in a Nissan plant. Put simply, it over-promised and under-delivered.

However, are perceptions of the X-Class being a rush job or little more than a badge-engineered Navara fair or accurate? We recently put the work-focused entry-level X-Class to work in our search for answers.

Some of my favourite television shows or movies are flawed. When I talk to people about those films and about those flaws, there's a pattern - they don't know what they are and are therefore a bit confused. I don't know why that appeals to me, it just does.

Cars can be like that. There are some cars that aren't sure what they are. One of the exemplars of this is the Toyota C-HR - a small SUV aimed at young get-up-and-go types but bought almost exclusively by baby boomers, attracted to the badge. Young folks want more performance, lower cost and Apple CarPlay.

Hindsight suggests that the less-than-stellar sales performance of the much-heralded Mercedes ute, the X-Class, might be down to confusion. Mercedes thought it would be one thing and it turns out the market thinks it's another.