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?

[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

[bencollins]

exactly mr kambites, when did hatchbacks become invalid