Amr in seattle has a fleet of type 2 sprinters and our old fleet of ford's is mostly type 2 with type 3 for bariatric and cct duties. We have gas powered boxes and diesels, and one lone chevy duramax type 3.
I hate the sprinters in a lot of ways. Gutless engines with awful turbo lag (we opted for the top of the spec v6 diesel) and 5 speed auto slush boxes that can never decide on a gear. They're grumbly and slow, and just don't feel appropriate as an ambulance. Up in the mountains, when we gun it, the 7.3 fords just walk away like it was nothing from 55-70. On a straight, the healthier of our 250-500k mile fords are neck and neck. The only benefit the sprinter has is a silent idle, making for more relaxing posting, but I prefer engine off anyways.
Ride quality is hands down better in a Ford e series (and hopefully the new transit) the sprinters have unbelievably bouncy rides, partly because they are made to haul a load, and with more weight in the back, the Ford irons out bumps better.
Turn circle in the sprinters is incredible. City driving through traffic, I do appreciate that. But paired with the asthmatic engine and slow transmission, it does drag the overall performance down.
Brakes are wooden and numb in the sprinters. The ford is mushy, but linear and predictable. Steering is bad in both, with a slight edge to the sprinter, though the driving position takes away from the slightly better feel
Space in the sprinters is impressive. I can stand up and i'm nearly 6'5 with boots on. And the bench seat backrest we went for has a 4 point harness belt that is very comfortable. I won't speak to interior layouts as they're all different, but I do not feel like Leader (our brand) did a very high quality job. Surfaces and fit and finish feel cheap and lacking.
The minivan side door is lovely too, but they have a flaw wherein if they don't close completely, when you set off, the auto locks engage, and the door jams HARD, becoming nearly impossible to open.
Auto locks suck. You can't unlock or lock the back doors if the engine is running with the key, meaning you have to shut down the engine at every scene or climb back into the cab and use the door locks from there. No problems like this with the ford, making it a much better vehicle for accident scenes.
Compared to old 06 fords, sprinter interior wins. So much more legroom and an actual glovebox. Newer fords are comparable.
Sprinters average 18 to 20mpg. Fords get 14ish. Considering 60% of our fuel is spent idling, it's irrelevant.
And the big elephant in the room. Reliability. The sprinters are nightmares, both in terms of regular breakdowns and cost of maintenance. The Mercedes brand urea injection fluid alone costs us about $300 an oil change, they chew through headlight bulbs, and there is an inherent design flaw. The egr system stores the soot in a tank, which after a few minutes at 60mph, is dumped. Our engines often never break 45mph, often idling for 8 or 10 hours straight. This causes the system to foul, which heats up the sensor, overheats the wiring, and then melts the wiring harnesses. My old unit was out of service for three weeks of every month, for nearly five months. under 65k miles. Most of our sprinters are between 60 and 160k miles and are all regularly breaking down. Our fords are all 250 minimum, and rarely ever break
I moved out to the Eastside for more proper ems work (seattle fire never lets you do any patient care) and out here we get old fords with strobe bars instead of the fancy led bars of the mercs and a quarter million miles. Apart from our maintenence shop being nickel and dimed so hard they can't fix basic wear items like a screeching idler belt pully, our ford has never had a problem in a year now beyond a shift lever breaking once.
Overall, I like a twinkie for threading through traffic, but I'd prefer a 1 or 3 for the "proper ambulance" look. And it really bothers me for some reason that it doesn't say "AMBULANCE" anywhere on our rigs at amr.
The only type of rig I have not driven is a medium duty.
