Sunday 19th April 2015

Mercedes GLC ... unleashed

No comedy Welsh rappers or loony leftie politicians, just an attempt to out-uglify the BMW X4

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Somewhere in a room in Stuttgart is the bit of Mercedes' marketing department responsible for naming new models. For years this was a fairly cursory process requiring application of a hierarchical number and easy-to-understand formula relating to whether the car was closest in size to a C-, an E- or an S-Class. You can imagine the team were probably able to work fairly minimal hours and take Fridays off.

Better from the back? Erm, nope

Last year that changed with Merc's decision to launch a new naming strategy that managed to be both rational and deeply confusing at the same time. And now they've managed to come up with a completely logical three-letter name for a new off-road concept guaranteed to - almost certainly inadvertently - prompt recollections by loyal lefties of the former Greater London Council.

We doubt Daimler gave too much consideration to British metropolitan politics in the 1980s. But it's going to be hard for people of a certain age to hear 'GLC' and for it not to evoke memories of the former firebrand council. Or even the Comic Strip episode named after it, where Robbie Coltrane plays Charles Bronson playing Ken Livingstone.

Politics not your thing? Maybe GLC will bring to mind Newport's finest novelty hip hoppers, Goldie Lookin Chain instead.

Tough call as to whether it's uglier than X4

Working on the assumption neither registered with our imagined Mercedes naming department let's take a look at the GLC Concept itself, which is being unveiled at the Shanghai motor show. Officially it's just a concept at the moment, one that in the words of the official release "combines typically stylistic features of a coupe with the sensually pure design idiom of coming SUV generations." We'd call that a clear hint that Mercedes is planning to fill in one of the very few gaps remaining in its off-roader clan with what, if we're decrypting the model name correctly, would be a smaller version of the recently launched GLE Coupe.

The show car looks slightly more coupe-ish than SUV-ish, to judge from the official pictures. We're told that it uses Merc's twin-turbocharged 3.0-litre V6 and drives through the company's new nine-speed autobox and a 4Matic four-wheel drive system. All of which sounds very production viable, doesn't it? The official release even admits "The SUV world of Mercedes-Benz has room for further models, such as a production version of the Concept GLC Coupe." Which sounds like a big green light to us.

We look forward to driving one to the former County Hall.

 

 

[Sources: BBC]

[bencollins]

Curmudgeonheads.
The logical conclusion to car design?
High up good vision, protection against other SUVs in the arms race, and aerodynamic.
Why does removing an isoceles triangle of luggage space that would block rear vision and never gets filled, make this invalid?

[Martin_M]

I prefer the look of this to the humpback x4 tbh. Quite like the Stacked exhaust pipes too.

[kambites]

It certainly does get impressively close to the X4 in the ugliness stakes.

[Adam2k90]

Please tell me this is some form of sick April fools joke.

[Nickbrapp]

Merc are trying really hard to out do bmw in the neiche stakes and audi in photo copied cars.

I assume we will also get a glc 4x4 to go with this.


I wonder if there will be a sla and slc as a gL replacement soon

[Quhet]

It looks foul

[dbdb]

Is there a car manufacturer making uglier and more vulgar looking cars than Mercedes at the moment? - I don't think there is. They're truly grim.

[bencollins]

PW said:

bencollins said:

Curmudgeonheads.

It's interesting how these articles are written. Would be fun to see how the general reaction changed if the story was a neutral statement of fact, or even positive, rather than the typical "this is st, you should hate it" PH editorial attitude.

Editorial bait.
We fell for it.
Hook, line and synchro

[blearyeyedboy]

Unfortunate how the photos are Goldie Looking.

Cue the Green Party in London: Guns don't kill people, SUV's do...*

* Or at least, they might blind you by their sheer ugliness.

[samoht]

If you're going to reference previous uses of the name GLC, how about the use of it on a previous car?

Mazda 323, aka GLC

wonder if Mazda still had rights to the name?

The Merc looks slightly less wrong than the BMW to me, I think the smoother, less fussy surfaces make it a tad better.

[IforB]

Ooof. That really was walloped very, very hard with the ugly stick. That sort of low sloping roofline on a monstrous great body always looks awful. The X6 and X4 have already proven that fact.

Merc used to stand for class. This monstrosity shows how far they've changed and it's not for the better.

[Demonix]

Ach mein gott! That is one fugly car, our teutonic cousins may have some great engineers but their designers have produced some minging cars of late I.e. BMW X6, X4 and last 5 and 6 series, Audi just play safe with boring homogeneous exec wagons on the whole as do Mercedes.
Now we have GLC which is gopping and fills a requirement dreamt up by the marketing weenies, as ugly an pointless as a Nissan juke but with a premium price and an aspirational badge.

[MadDog1962]

Another ugly as all hell and expensive model for a niche that we never knew existed. I'm sure it will sell well to the the same people that have been buying similar products from BMW.

[bitchstewie]

That is pretty horrid.

I like SUVs, I had one for 4 years and can see the good side and the bad but that thing just looks fking awful.

I'll reserve judgement until I see a real one in a bit nicer colour with no CGI rendering but yuck.

[zeDuffMan]

I've still not seen an X4 on the road.

Wonder why Merc thought to pinch Lexus' awful stacked exhausts idea?

Good thing they've gone a good job on the C63 or else you'd think they've lost the plot completely.

[Mastodon2]

That is absolutely horrid.

[h0b0]

bencollins said:

Editorial bait.
We fell for it.
Hook, line and synchro

I've seen one of these on the streets and it is that bad.

[TheFinners]

What the fking fk is that?

[daytona365]

Mmmm, classy car for classy people.

[dunnoreally]

Even disregarding my personal preferences, I genuinely don't understand why people buy this kind of vehicle. I mean, are there really GL owners who get into their cars every day thinking to themselves "you know what, I wish this was a bit less practical..."?