Review: Grech’s Mercedes Sprinter 4x4 Camper Van Silently Spikes Overlanding with Luxury

"To him who in the love of Nature holds communion with her visible forms, she speaks …" So wrote poet William Cullen Bryant, but in his day communing with nature meant schlepping a tent to some god-forsaken nowhere and sleeping in the dirt with the bugs. Happily, we've found a way to enjoy nature's voice of gladness without actually having to roll around in it: Grech RV's Turismo-ion 4x4, a go-anywhere silent glamper based on the Mercedes-Benz Sprinter van that you can drive every day.

Grech's killer app, as denoted by the -ion in the Turismo-ion name, is its lithium-ion battery pack. Most RVs have a small set of lead-acid house batteries that can run the lights and a few odds and ends, but for the really heavy electrical lifting—air conditioning, microwave, things like that—you have to fire up a generator. The Turismo-ion is one of a new breed of Class B RVs that does without a generator, instead using a 16-kWh lithium-ion battery to run almost everything (that's 1,260 amp-hours, if you prefer the standard language of RVs; traditional RV house batteries are around 80-100 Ah; heating and hot water use a diesel-fired heater). The batteries can be juiced up from a 110-volt outlet, or they recharge automatically when the engine runs. There's also a rooftop solar panel, but it only adds a trickle of charge.

And yes, this setup really does work. We sat back in the Turismo-ion's soft leather-clad confines, boiled up a couple of hot dogs on the inversion stove, nuked some popcorn, grabbed a cold soda from the fridge, and watched a movie on the built-in television, all while basking in the blaze of countless LED lights. (It was too cold to use the A/C.) When rain and flooding knocked out the power in our home office, we brought our laptop out to the Turismo-ion and used it to great success as a portable, battery-powered, snack-enabled office. Grech promises about 12 hours of solid use from the batteries, and we can tell you that several solid hours of lazing about in the guise of work barely made a dent in their capacity.

As night fell, we converted the Turismo-ion to bedroom mode. The rear couch motors down, and the two ottomans (which are side-facing seats in larger Grech models; Turismo is the shortest one Grech makes, so they are overlapped by cabinetry) motor inward. We've used similar convertible beds in other Class B RVs and found them too thinly padded for comfortable sleep, but the Turismo has a soft, supportive mattress that made it easy to drift off to dreamland. Size-wise, a king-size sheet fit just fine, but we were tempted not to use it—the leather on the couch (also found on the driver and passenger seats) is so buttery soft, it must come from the hide of something on the endangered species list. The Turismo has full-size mesh screens to cover side and rear door openings, so you can sleep with all doors open and walk that fine line between taking in nature and nature coming in to take you.

Of course, to enjoy nature's healing sympathy, you have to get there, and the Turismo-ion 4x4 does so rather well. As we alluded to earlier, the Turismo is the smallest of several Grech floor plans; we requested it because we were curious to see if one of these babies could work as a daily driver. It did. We spent nearly a month tooling around town in the Turismo-ion, which is based on the 144-inch-wheelbase Sprinter. We found it fits easily into car-sized parking spots and is as maneuverable as many midsize SUVs. Height is its only real limitation: At 10 feet, 2 inches, the Turismo-ion 4x4 is too tall for most parking garages.

The Grech Turismo is also surprisingly pleasant to drive, now that Mercedes upgraded from the industrial-grade plastics it formerly used in the Sprinter's cab. The 3.0-liter turbodiesel V-6 provides brisk-enough acceleration, and the Turismo-ion happily keeps up with traffic. All the things you'd expect to be terrible in a van—ride quality, steering precision, body control—are surprisingly good in the Sprinter, though there's quite a bit of road roar from the knobby off-road tires, and fuel economy is pretty dismal. We saw 11 to 12 mpg in mixed driving.

Then we took our show off the road, on a deeply rutted forest road that seemed to have collected most of the snow many of us moved to Southern California in order to avoid. Our Turismo-ion 4x4 had the older manually selectable four-wheel-drive system, but we didn't need it often; the Sprinter chassis has the ground clearance (and the weight) to keep itself moving. When the rears let go, a push of the button kept us moving. We're glossing over this section a bit because Grech RV is in the process of switching over to the newer Sprinter chassis, which uses a 2.0-liter turbodiesel engine and full-time all-wheel drive based on Mercedes' 4Matic system. Based on our first drive impressions, we have no doubt the AWD Sprinter will be just as effective for climbing hills rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun.

Problems? We noticed a few. One was a general lack of storage space. In the Turismo, there's no closet, something you don't really miss until it's gone. (That's a function of the Turismo's small size; Grech says it wanted to preserve the restroom's generous dimensions. Larger models do have a closet between the restroom and the driver's seat.) Another problem with the Turismo's small size is that the A/C unit is nearly on top of the bed, and it's noisy. Also, the cabinets don't latch closed, and you can imagine how that went while off-roading; the contents of one cabinet launched repeatedly across the cabin as the van lurched into a rut. Grech says it is addressing our latter two concerns with a quieter A/C unit and latching cabinets.

The Turismo doesn't have a ladder, something that seems to be de rigueur for overlanding RVs. (One friend we visited mistook us for an Amazon delivery van.) But maybe flying below the radar (perhaps a poor cliché to choose for a 122-inch-tall vehicle) is for the best, because all this go-anywhere luxury doesn't come cheap: The basic Turismo lists for $199,900, the -ion battery package ads another $19,000, and four-wheel drive adds $10,000. Our test vehicle's total cost: $228,900 before options. Keep in mind, you can get a decent-sized Class A motorhome for that—with a closet.

For that kind of cabbage, we expect the best of the best. We've found fit and finish to be hit or miss on a lot of these Class B motorhomes, but the Turismo-ion seemed better built than most. One of the wall outlets was mounted crooked, and the time-out settings for the control screens seemed to be reversed: The screen above the door went dark after a few seconds, but the one opposite the couch stayed on for hours. We had to cover it with a towel to sleep.

All in all, though, we found the Grech RV Turismo-ion 4x4 did everything we asked it to do. It allowed us to "go forth under the open sky and list on Nature's teachings"—and then nuke a little popcorn and take in a movie in electrically powered silence. To enjoy the flora and fauna while keeping it at a civil distance is our idea of glamping, and the Grech Turismo made it possible.