Review: Mercedes-Benz GLS
Andrew Frankel
The new Mercedes-Benz GLS comes with an impressive boast. According to its creators it is nothing less than the ‘S-Class of SUVs’. Given that the S-Class has been the world’s greatest mass market luxury car for the 30-something years I’ve been doing this job, that’s a pretty mighty cheque to write on behalf of the GLS. Can any high and heavy SUV designed to travel both on and off the road really stand comparison to such a paragon of automotive excellence?
The one word answer is no. The perhaps more helpful long version goes, ‘no, but it gets closer than you’d imagine, and in ways you’d not expect.’
One quite easy way the GLS helps realise its aspirations to S-Class-dom is simply to grow until it’s the size of one. In both length and wheelbase it now sits neatly between the standard and long-wheelbase versions of its limousine stablemate. That means there’s not just space for seven on board but space to spare: average sized adults will not feel short-changed even in the third row, while everyone else will feel lavishly catered for.
The interior quality is up the S-Class standards and there is a similar acreage of digital displays. Benz’s MBUX operating system is comprehensive and devilishly clever but it’s not as intuitive as, say, BMW’s rival system and it still doesn’t know when you’re talking to it, or just about it. Which means every time you say the word ‘Mercedes’, it chimes into your conversation to ask how it can help, which on a Mercedes-Benz press drive is really quite often. Worse, you can’t even tell it go away in Anglo-Saxon argot because it has not yet learned the vernacular. Here as elsewhere, politeness pays.
Globally Mercedes-Benz has made a wide range of engines available for the GLS, including two diesels and three petrol motors, but in the UK the choice is the more powerful of the two diesels and, later this year a predictably punchy AMG V8 with over 600bhp. I did drive the standard 4.0-litre V8 with 482bhp and thought it quite superb, but Benz has left it off the UK list, at least for now.
But the diesel is pretty splendid too. One of the new generation of straight-six motors, it’s powerful, smooth, exceptionally quiet and hooked up to a flawless nine-speed automatic gearbox.
The surprise is what a pleasant car it is to drive, even on standard air suspension, let alone with optional E-Active body control which is the only system on the market with complete active control over both springs and dampers at all four corners. The ride is good, the handling quite exceptional for this kind of car.
No it doesn’t have quite the last level of sybaritic silence and comfort as an S-Class but for such a lofty and bulky car it does exceptionally well. The result is a car I liked far more than expected, one that would be fine tow car and, with the £1,500 optional off-road package, more than capable of tackling the toughest terrain any normal owner might encounter.
This, then, is Mercedes’ most versatile car to date. It may not quite be the S-Class of SUVs, but it is the very next best thing.
Stat attack: Mercedes-Benz GLS 400d
Price: £73,995
Engine: 3.0-litre turbocharged six-cylinder petrol
Transmission: nine-speed automatic, four-wheel-drive
Power/Torque: 325bhp @ 3,600rpm/700Nm (516lb ft) @ 1,200rpm
0-62mph: 5.3 seconds
Top speed: 148mph
