Ford Transit AWD vs Mercedes Sprinter AWD Off Road Test MPG Acceleration

Hey guys this is Brendan with Gone Mobile Vans. We're here in Alabama Hills. Behind me is our 24 High Roof Transit Trail. That's our demo van. We also have a High Roof 23 Sprinter. Both of these things are built out to the max. Fully capable. Got everything you need in them. We're out here. We had a great night camping last night and today we're going to do a little comparison. So we're going to do fuel economy between the two platforms. We're going to do some testing on the 395 to see how well either one of these vans can pass each other. Sometimes these things are you might get stuck trying to pass a semi out here so we're going to do a little bit of that. And then we're going to wrap it up with some off-road testing. There's some great trails out here and some tough obstacles so we're going to have a little fun doing that. Check out clearance. See how well traction control does and get into some fun. Alright guys so we're about to get going. I turned off parking sensors. I turned off lane assist because that's annoying. I did not turn off traction control because what I found is it sometimes does a little better if you leave it on when you're going to lift the tire. So go ahead and give it a try. I'm also going to put it in first gear so it doesn't try to shift on me. Alright definitely a little bit of drama there. Lots of wheel spin. Kind of thrown side to side but did power right through it but I'm curious to see what that looks like on the camera. Okay guys, challenging obstacle here. I am going to put this into mud and ruts mode. It's going to remove the traction control. Give me a hit the shift point there for us. So moving into this obstacle it's pretty um yeah steep deep into a dip and then back up again. Griffin just went through and uh here I'm following next here. Okay down and got some tire spin there for sure but um god it just this torque and horsepower in this thing is just freaking awesome. Jeez. So that was really unexpected. I think what happened was my hand bumped the steering wheel stock and it bumped it into neutral and then it weirdly just shut the car off which was totally bizarre. We're gonna go on through this thing. Same obstacle we just did in mud and ruts and now I'm in normal mode and let's see uh see how it does here. And back yeah and same motors right on through. All right so as they say third time's a charm. I have traction control off, parking assist off, lane assist off and I'm in first gear and I will not be bumping the the vehicle into neutral for sure. So let's give it a go. All right guys we just finished up with a pretty tough obstacle in our opinion. Both of these vans did really well. It's steep, it's a little off camber and deep and sandy and stuff like that but I put my van first time through in the mud and ruts mode and that basically removes traction control, keeps the it kind of geared lower, it keeps it really locked into first maybe second gear so you got all that torque right there. Came through pretty easy. Little struggle heading up the hill. Not a some wheel spin but not a terrible amount. Felt really good actually. I mean the power band on the thing is impressive so I was able to get right up. I felt pretty good. What what was your experience like? Well not that. So I love the Sprinter. It's a capable platform. What I was trying to play around with was the different traction control modes. So you can go traction control on or traction control off. I always turn off the parking assist because that kind of gets annoying and I also turn off the lane keep assist but I drove through this a couple times yesterday and it was no problem and I did take it a bit faster with some momentum and today I was like okay let's just go like a normal pace just like how you normally drive on a trail and not like you're trying to be Evel Knievel or something and as I drove through the first time I had traction control on. I drove up and once my, I'm assuming like my front tire or whatever, we'll check the footage, it's going to be all over light here. I could see your left front tire was probably about a foot off the ground. Yeah so it was definitely lifting a tire and that was kind of what I wanted to test with the traction control. So it was on and it it was braking but it felt pretty crazy to be honest with you. Yeah. A lot of wheel spin. So on the second one I did traction control off and that's when things got super crazy. So I was going and the van basically bucked up. Right. And I don't know if you've seen how the Sprinter. It's right there. It's got that stock on the footage of what that looks like. But it's not like a shifter like on a truck or like a shifter like on a car. It has like the same thing you'd use for like a turn signal. Yeah. It's super weird. Yeah. And I've always hated it. But I literally think as I was basically trying to correct my hand bumped it and it bumped it into neutral and then I was applying throttle and neutral somehow. Right. And then the van just shut off and I was like what the heck is going on. Like the engine killed everything. The engine died. Yeah the engine died and then I had to put it back in park. Right. And I was like okay I hope this starts. It was a weird situation. You're like this. I'm like literally parked with like a wheel in the air. Yeah. So got it working and then it drove out. But yeah so then the third pass through I was like okay let's let's try this redemption round. Right yeah. I put traction control back off and took a tiny bit more momentum. Yeah. But yeah I would say I mean unbiased. I know you could say the Sprinter is better traction control than the Transit. Yeah the limited slip differential on the Transit is really just it's a beast. And so my second time through I did put it back into just normal mode like you would drive on the street. And it did feel a little I want to say coming down the hill it probably shifted into a higher gear than I meant it to be so it needed to drop back down. Overall I still was able to you know get through it relatively easily. I do feel like the mud and ruts mode was the better choice for things like that. So one of the things that I remember to do when are coming up on these obstacles is to do that. I just feel like it's the better option. But it still did it in the standard mode so if you're not aware of those modes on your Transit then you're still going to be okay but you can get familiar with those drive modes. They're pretty cool. For sure. Okay guys we just arrived at our second campsite for this trip. We decided heading up the highway we wanted to do a simulation of a passing test to see like what it would take for either of these vans to accelerate and get past a semi if you needed to. So we were at 50 miles an hour. Mashed the gas pedal. Got up to 70. That's a decent example of trying to pass. We got the timer going. Videotaped the speedometer to see how long it takes and let's see which one did better. Alright guys just finished the trip. Got back to the gas station right around the corner from the shop. 19.767 gallons and I set the trip yesterday. 211 miles point one and one tenth. So here we go. Let's see what our overall mileage was. So 211.1 divided by 19.767 equals a whopping 10.67 miles per gallon. Not all that great. However we did spend quite a bit of time off-road. Slow and yeah a lot of fun stuff. Anyways that's the result and I'll check my math and confirm it later. Alright so I just got back to the exact same gas station as Brendan and we both drove the same exact distance 211 miles. The grand total for me to fill up was 67.87 but that doesn't factor in the diesel exhaust fluid that was used so I asked Chad GPT to make an estimate for me of what that would be and it said it would be $3.32 bringing the grand total to 71.195. So basically $13.78 cheaper and over the 211 miles I used 15.086 gallons which makes my total miles per gallon 13.99. If you like this kind of content please consider subscribing. If you want to do stuff like this let me know. We're happy to help build you a van. If you want to come along with us we might be doing that in the future as well. So please let us know if you like this kind of content. We're super excited to have you along with us and hope to see you on the next one.