It certainly wouldn’t be an overstatement to say that the GLC is crucially important to Mercedes – perhaps its most important car. Why’s that? Because since it first went on sale in 2015 it has rather swiftly climbed its way to the number one position on the Mercedes sales chart until it’s become the firm’s global best-seller. Who’d have thunk it, eh?
What are the changes over the old car?
Mercedes modestly says that it was “hard to improve” on the outgoing car, but that hasn’t stopped them tinkering with it. The styling is sleeker (21mm narrower, to be precise), longer and lower than before, with 70 litres of space freed up in the boot. We think that the styling is improved over the previous-generation GLC too – a touch more elegant and sophisticated, you could say.
Why do people like it so much?
Well, there’s the question – it’s quite a neat little family SUV, sitting alongside the C-Class in Merc’s parallel universe range of slightly bloated soft-roaders. It looks alright, not too ridiculous, it drives decently and there’s enough room for the family. Plus it gets some fun tech.
Such as?
Well, you’ve got the now ubiquitous ginormo-touchscreen on the inside that draws the eye as soon as you get onboard. The aircon controls are always available in the corners and the graphics are fairly crisp and intuitive. The GLC has almost done away with buttons, and the haptic touch controls remain a pain to operate. The idea is that you use voice control, but it’s hit-and-miss at best.
The other tech excitement comes from the powertrain department: all the basic petrol and diesel versions of the car come with at least 48V mild hybrid tech as standard, which means a beefier starter motor for extended periods with the engine off, including the odd shutdown going down a hill or suchlike. But there are plug-in hybrid versions of the car available with both petrol and diesel engines.
But the plug-in’s electric range is miserable, right?
You’d think so, the way everyone expects us to get excited about 30 miles of electric power that runs out quickly, but the PHEV versions of the GLC are rated for around 60 to 80 miles of WLTP range, which is very impressive. Even better, they come with 11kW onboard chargers as standard, but you can option CCS fast charging at 60kW to juice up even quicker. It’s the plug-in hybrid that thinks it’s a real electric car.
On UK roads and cold-to-mild temperatures, we managed nearly 60 miles from the battery. That’s enough to cope with most people’s commuting round trips, meaning you’d be using cheap(er) electric top-ups to deal with the daily grind. That’s not a small thing.
How does it drive?
Initially we drove full German-spec cars with air suspension and strange pinstriped wooden dashboard (the Germans love their weird interiors), but the fancy suspension isn’t likely to come to the UK. Which is good, because it doesn’t ride particularly well. In everything bar the diesel plug-in (the heaviest combo you can get) the car wallowed about excruciatingly in Comfort mode and although Sport mode tightened things up, getting body roll in check, it made for a firmer ride than we’d like in a nice family SUV.
UK-specific cars are better, but the criticism of wallowy handling continues. Now, we don’t object to soft suspension – it’s great for comfort – but when combined with a lack of body control and inaccurate brakes it makes the GLC rather vague to drive. The Dynamic Select system provides a choice of driving modes (Comfort, ECO, Sport, Sport+, Individual), but Sport mode remains a bit wooden-kneed for UK roads, and there’s a distinct lack of ‘sport’ in the GLC’s make-up anyway. It’s the kind of car that does business without having to acknowledge such things. It’s a car that needs to be driven gently: you end up making allowances for it where you wouldn’t in the equivalent Audi or BMW.
What will it cost?
The range begins with the GLC 220d 4Matic AMG Line diesel – non plug-in, mild-hybrid – at £51,855 and walks up from there to the 300 de AMG Line Premium Plus with the plug-in capability at £74,460. And yes, those prices are as toppy as they look. The equivalent BMW X3 is at least five grand less.
All get the 9G-Tronic Plus nine-speed automatic, and they’re all 4Matic four-wheel drive. AMG Line, AMG Line Plus and AMG Line Premium Plus are the trim lines, and if you’re using it as a family car go for the base trim. You still get 64 colours of ambient lighting, heated sports seats, auto climate, huge screens, wireless charging and a fingerprint scanner, so you’re not missing out on toys up front.
What's the verdict?
“The GLC is the most popular Mercedes in the world… but the suspension, although comfortable, isn’t well controlled”
We already know that the GLC is the most popular Mercedes in the world, and there’s nothing to suggest that the latest version of the car will do anything to harm that status. If anything, the decent slug of range on the new PHEV versions of the car will only make it more compelling to company car buyers and those who want a car capable of zero-emission running but suffer from range anxiety.
The GLC is a reasonable all-rounder for the undemanding. It’s got the right badge, the right look and the right tech. But the suspension, although soft and comfortable, isn’t well controlled and even by the standards of the class it’s expensive. It’s the sort of car you see parked on ‘premium’ housing estates across the land, a car you buy as much to say something about yourself as for its practicality. The hybrid version is class-leading for its range and integration (and as an individual model is worth an extra point), the rest are competent but unremarkable. Of course, we’ll always say you’d be better off getting a nice C-Class Estate, but that doesn’t make the GLC a bad purchase.
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Continue reading: Driving
Driving
What is it like to drive?
The GLC is a dependable companion that’ll fit neatly into the day to day lives of whatever family unit snaps it up. And you can’t really say any better than that for a family SUV, can you? Wrong! You ought to care more about the way your car drives, and what’s evident from the GLC is that Mercedes doesn’t really. The GLC does a very ordinary job: the brakes are mushy, the steering disconnected, the suspension doesn’t support the body weight well enough, so it pitches and rolls around.
But isn’t that good for comfort?
Yeah, if the road is smooth and the speed is steady. But if you’ve got kids on screens in the back it isn’t going to be long on an undulating road before the constant movement causes motion sickness.
Mercedes has clearly put its effort into the PHEV tech instead of the dynamics – and the results of that are rather better. Unlike a lot of similar cars with plug-in powertrains the electric motor is solid enough for measured everyday driving. Offering 60 miles of juice – more if you’re careful – and fast charging capability, it feels like just the thing for people who can’t make the full leap into EV ownership, and the GLC makes it a fairly painless transition.
Helpfully the electric motor is packaged in with the transmission to save space and cut down on cables running through the car, although the crazy nine-speed gearbox feels like it has a gear or three too many: kickdown sometimes takes a while as the ‘box figures out which gear it needs to get itself motivated.
Got it. Can you hustle the GLC?
UK-spec suspension consists of four-link front suspension and multi-link independent rear set-up, with some electronic tweakery for the damping, but the GLC is definitely more cruise than abuse. You can spin some speed out of the car, but the engine (2.0-litre petrol in this case), aided and abetted by the electric motor, never feels particularly willing. And the nine-speed ‘box is much happier when it can plot and plan; getting aggressive and on/off throttle seems to confuse it a bit: the paddles help, but it’s certainly not set up for scything. Body control simply isn’t good enough: this is a car best left to the plain business of ordinary driving. Which is all 99 per cent of owners want from it.
Is there other tech tucked away?
As an aside, European cars actually have a rear-wheel steer system to help the GLC feel a little bit smaller, but we haven’t tested it in the UK. When we tried it in Germany it did a grand job of masking the car’s size, making it usefully agile around town. Which always goes down well when you’re navigating one of our lovely dark urban multi storeys.
What are the different powertrains like?
The GLC arrived in the UK with three mild hybrid assisted petrol and diesel units, all 2.0-litre engines. The 200 and 300 are 201bhp and 255bhp petrol cars, while the 220d uses a 194bhp diesel. The 48V mild hybrid tech offers imperceptible and smooth start-stop functionality and will turn the engine off when it can to save on fuel. There’s also a bit of help to smooth out acceleration there too, but don’t be under any impression it can drive on electric power. It can’t.
The 300e and 300de are the plug-in options, and they use the same engines as the mild hybrid cars with a 134bhp electric motor as back-up, with 31.2kWh battery stuffed under the car. This doesn’t just help economy, performance is notably brisker too – the petrol’s 0–62mph time drops from 7.8 seconds to 6.7 seconds and the diesel’s from eight seconds flat to 6.4 seconds. You only get a 49-litre fuel tank on the plug-ins though, while the standard cars get 62-litres for dinosaur juice.
Mercedes GLC 300e review: 320bhp PHEV tested
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Mercedes GLC review: six-cylinder GLC350d driven
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Previous: Overview
Continue reading: Interior
Interior
What is it like on the inside?
Owners of the previous car will find a familiar space inside the latest GLC – much of the car seems more like a deep facelift rather than an all-new interpretation. Up front are many familiar elements, though perhaps not in the same layout. The touchscreen is much larger, for instance, and better integrated on the whole.
The familiar Mercedes air vents have been posted to more of a background role and the space between the front seats is a little bit tidier. There’s no touchpad or set of buttons to control anything on the screen, it’s fingers only, so you’ll probably want to stash a microfibre cloth away somewhere for a quick wipe at the lights.
Is the touchscreen a nightmare to use?
It’s largely a successful effort here – like many manufacturers Mercedes has opted to get rid of buttons and shift those functions to the infotainment. The screen works quickly and the graphics are fairly clear across the board. However, the steering wheel touch panels remain a significant bugbear – awkwardly angled for thumbs, hard to press and not a patch on the old physical buttons and rotary controllers. If you’re not getting on with them, there’s always the Hey Mercedes voice control function. Yeah, that’s every bit as patchy as you expect it to be.
What about other tech?
We’re not saying that Mercedes is adding tech features for the sake of it, but there’s a fingerprint scanner below the central touchscreen so you can log into your MBUX profile with saved favourite destinations, car settings and other things. Mercedes also touts over-the-air capability that will mean you can buy software upgrades for new features on the car even after the company has sold it to you. So that’s something to look forward to.
What’s the space like inside?
There’s adequate room in the back for kids and adults, but the hard plastic backs of the front seats don’t exactly give it a luxury ambience and the extra 2mm of legroom promised in the facelift is hardly generous. Plus the middle passenger still has to straddle a sizeable transmission tunnel and cope with a narrow perch.
The boot is a pretty decent size: there’s 70 litres of extra space on the old car, which makes for 620 litres with the seats up. However… the PHEV cars have their battery at the back and thus lose not only the cavernous space under the boot floor, but suffer from a higher floor altogether that drops load space to 400 litres with the seats up. The hybrid system may be good, but there’s an argument that too much space has been sacrificed to the 31.2kWh battery.
Previous: Driving
Continue reading: Buying
Buying
What should I be paying?
There’s some cheeky stuff going on here. As we’ve mentioned already, you can’t get into a GLC for less than £50,000 – so you’re in for upwards of £650 a month. If you fancy a 300e hybrid you’re going to be paying over £800 a month. And you’re not going to be saving that much money, so that’s £150 a month to feel good about yourself. A gym membership is cheaper. We think. TopGear doesn’t do gyms.
Costly, but I can’t see what’s cheeky about it.
At this point we’ll do the inevitable and point you at a C-Class Estate. You’re thinking of the hybrid, which in the GLC means over £62,000. In the C-Class Estate the same powertrain is six grand less. And that’s in flagship Premium Plus trim, whereas the GLC is base AMG Line. The cheeky bit is that the hybrid C-Class Estate isn’t available in lesser trims – the saloon is (you can have a C300e four door for £48,710), but a base trim estate would really expose the GLC for the over-priced machine it is.
In other words SUV buyers, Merc has seen you stampeding towards the showroom and worked out the profit margins accordingly. Which also makes it well worth having a look at a BMW X3 xDrive 30e. Seven grand less than the Merc, not quite such a competent hybrid (30-mile range), but decent enough and significantly better to drive.
Talk to me about spec levels.
As mentioned, you can option one of the three trim levels and then run on from there. Base AMG Line 220d diesels list at £51,855, and there’s a model every few grand to the £74,460 300de. The best compromise if you want a luxury touch is the mid-level AMG Line Premium – well-kitted without being a Christmas tree. The plug-in is the most interesting and potentially useful if you can stretch to it – which just leaves you with the decision as to whether petrol or diesel suits. Go petrol. It’ll make you use electric more, it suits the car’s manners better and having to tell people that your new hybrid is backed up by diesel isn’t a great look.
As far as economy goes, the base 220d with mild-hybrid returns 51.4mpg, with the 300 petrol registering 37.2mpg. Once you’re into the plug-in territory, things get complicated thanks to that generous potential EV-only range. The 300de ‘officially’ hits 706.3mpg and the 300e 565 on the nose. They’re obviously pigs-with-wings numbers, but that gives a five per cent benefit-in-kind rate to business users, rather than 33-37 for the cars that only operate in mild-hybrid mode.
What really matters is how much you actually plug the thing in, but with the current price of fuel versus electricity, that might end up being a decent motivator to get a home wallbox and get rigorous with the plugging-in. Insurance runs from 40E-41E for the 220d to 47E-48E for the 300e – not startling.
What sort of options will there be?
Various gadgets and gizmos are available as extras on the car, including internal wifi, a new panoramic sunroof, massage seats, head-up display and the ability to connect to your home internet to control things like the central heating. Yep, that’ll be seamless. A new parking package is available with a 360-degree camera, help with manoeuvring and even a ‘transparent bonnet’ feature that will aid getting about at low speeds (an idea nabbed from Land Rover). Plus of course you’ll be able to spec the car with driving safety tech out the wazoo. You couldn’t drive into a tree even if you wanted to these days. Don’t try that.
The latest version of Merc’s MBUX software also comes with the car, with all its fancy graphics and connectivity. The in-built satnav is almost worth actually using if you can’t be bothered to connect your phone, and the car will even connect to a number of music streaming providers or tell you the latest news headlines. Exciting stuff.
Great stuff, but will the electric ones tow?
The PHEVs are both rated to tow 2,000kg of braked trailer, which is less than the entry powertrains but impressive for a zero emission capable car if you’re looking for something to hitch up.
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