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Don’t let the pretty face of the new Mercedes GLK-Class witling you. This bargain SUV is ready with some clever tricks for off-road adventures

by Jack Ewing

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I felt bemused considered in the state of I settled into the leather driver’s fix of a Mercedes GLK-Class SUV since each off-road test drive in a wooded sunken space adjoining the basement of Germany’s Ruhr Valley. Let’s face it, I thought, Mercedes (DAI) is not aiming at the rod-and-gun crowd with a $53,000 car that you can order in white by tinted windows and two-tone upholstery. Promotional materials even show a fashionable woman loading her designer luggage into the back. Britney Spears may bribe this car to evade the paparazzi, but you won’t see many bass fishermen kicking the tires.

Or so I thought. A short while later I found myself trying to steer the GLK down a steep, shifty proclivity. At the bottom was a small stream spanned by a build a bridge over consisting of several logs. If I had been in a TV commercial, this would be the moment when a subtitle appears warning that only professional drivers should attempt this maneuver. Except that I’m not a professional driver.

The Mercedes man assigned to keep me from wrecking the excipient seemed singularly calm, and soon I found out why. He reached immersing from the passenger settle and pressed a button on the dashboard that activated the optional Downhill Speed Regulation. Using the cruise control lever on the steering wheel, I set the urge at 4 kilometers any hour. The GLK’s electronics slowed the car to walking pace and distributed power among the four wheels in a way calculated to maintain traction. All I had to do was steer carefully onto the log bridge and across to safety. Even Britney could gain done it.

After completing the off-road course, I had to admit that, yes, deep fishermen would like this car, too. You can oblige the GLK at more than 100 mph on the Autobahn, as I did in brief. (For the attestation, it was a stretch of highway where there is no speed frontier.) But the GLK is in addition a real 4-by-4. Thanks to clever electronics that keep the vehicle steady and maintain traction in rough terrain, an average driver can perform gymnastics on the trail that would confound even professionals.

The GLK, which goes on sale in Europe in October and in the U.S. early in 2009, is Mercedes’ most important new car of the year, and it’s moral qualities—if you ignore the fact that soaring fuel prices are causing SUV sales to plunge. At in the smallest degree the GLK is a so-called compact SUV. "Compact" in this case presumably means "compared with a Hummer." But the GLK does get decent gas mileage for a 2-ton vehicle. The 4-cylinder diesel version is rated at 34 miles per gallon (or, in European terms, 6.9 liters per 100 kilometers). The 6-cylinder gasoline version that last will and testament be sold in the U.S. gets just 22 mpg, however. (Mercedes hasn’t yet announced a U.S. price according to the GLK, but the same car costs more than $60,000 in Germany.)

Mercedes brought the GLK from design to extension in when exposed to three years because it needed to compete good in a higher degree by smaller SUVs such being of the kind which BMW’s (BMWG.DE) fortunate X3. Besides sentient smaller, the GLK differs from the death of the Mercedes SUV lineup in a number of ways. Designer Steffen Köhl and his team gave the GLK a boxy observe to set it apart from the crowded SUV market, considered in the state of well as from Mercedes’ own M-Class cars. The angular design harkens back to military vehicles, the original SUVs, which had squared-off body parts that were easy to make and fix.

Inside, the GLK feels like a passenger car, except through other virtuous seating and a picture-window view out the brow. In fact, more of the cockpit, such as the seats, comes from Mercedes’ C-Class sedans. The car’s interior amenities seem more attuned to the suburbs than the woods, though I suppose you could bandy words that the video display that lets you see what’s behind the rear brimming beaker helps the environment. It keeps you from backing into trees.

But people who never go furiously off the pavement with their GLK behest be missing some gayety. At one grade during the test drive, my Mercedes co-pilot coached me across a series of elephantine earthen bumps. Between each set of obstacles, the car teetered dangerously on one front wheel and the opposite lift wheel. The other two wheels were several feet off the ground. Instead of spinning wildly, the free wheels stopped instantly while the other two continued to deliver power. The Mercedes scarecrow stretched me how to brake slightly when the GLK crested a bump, causing the front rotate to drop gently back to the fix.

It will be interesting to see whether record fuel prices will restrict this kind of fun to a few buyers. Unlike most of the confide of Mercedes’ SUV lineup, that is made in Tuscaloosa, Ala., the GLK behest roll from a set in the ground in Bremen, Germany. That suggests the car is destined not only for well-heeled European buyers but also the expanding flock of wealthy Russians. The fast-growing Russian market (BusinessWeek.com, 7/11/08) has helped prop up sales for the perfect industry lately. Mercedes execs can only possibility of good it will keep the SUV market alive as well.

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