Quote:
Originally Posted by niky
The MB... very strange van... mid-engined front wheel drive, with a front transaxle instead of a transverse mount. Those were actually nice to drive... only ours were made in Indonesia by Ssangyong (with a 2.8 diesel, if I recall) and the interior plastics (locally sourced, I guess) turned brittle pretty quickly.
Also, the gearing was a bit too long on the diesels for commercial use... hire drivers would bust the engines while lugging them everywhere.
Sad to see the last one in our fleet go. It was a relatively painless big van drive compared to the other garbage we've had to put up with over the years.
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The MB isn't mid engined, front wheel drive, it's front engined, front wheel drive. The engine sits way, way out front, making it very, very front heavy (if the engine sits behind the front axle, it's considered mid-front engined sports cars, and some van are set up this way, such as the old Mazda Bongos and the current Suzuki APV). So front heavy in fact that the battery is located way out by the rear door to try and compensate. It always felt front heavy to drive and did nothing but understeer. Any time the engine sits completely in front of the front axle handling will suffer (more so when it's a longitudinal placement!). The transaxle located the axles just behind the clutch and the actual gears behind the axle, much like a mid engined super car
It was actually the most comfortable car I've ever owned. However, I wouldn't say it actually drove well. Even in our climate the plastics still looked good. The petrol version was pretty low geared, no problem pulling 5th at 38km/h, it cruised at BSFC at 80km/h. The switch gear also felt amazing compared to the flimsy stuff in modern cars. It had a crazy amount of space considering it's external dimensions.
In hind sight I should have kept it and bought the Kangoo for daily use. The MB100 would have been more livable in only occasional use. The gearbox was pretty bad, the turning circle embarrassing, the A/C far too thirsty and the fuel gauge all but pointless. It was also really noisy, thanks to the engine being only a plastic cover away from you. On the plus side, you got to sit in the comfy driver's seat while changing plugs. An EV conversion would have fixed 95% of it's issues, but one drive of the T5 and I was smitten. Most expensive mistake of my life...