While in Vermont I drove both the new GLA250 and the GLA45 which, like their platform mates CLA250 a

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Tossing the loud and boastful Mercedes GLA45 AMG around rustic Vermont towns left me constantly thinking the same thing: I can't believe Mercedes builds this car. Mercedes is a company at war with itself, at once both Germany's most staid luxury brand and also the maker of that country's most bashit cars. Tension is sometimes good and, in the case of this car, the tension is great.
( Full Disclosure : Mercedes wanted utv me to drive the GLA and GLA45 so badly they let me drive to Vermont and put me up in a hotel near the chilly waters of Lake Champlain. They also filled me up with cheese, beer and Ben & Jerry's ice cream. I apologize to anyone who shared a car with me.)
The Fall of Constantinople precipitated the Renaissance that gave us Michelangelo and Da Vinci. The time of the Spanish Civil War was also the time of Picasso and Orwell. But war also produces propaganda. utv The films of Leni Riefenstahl and D.W. Griffith were also results of conflicts and, technical brilliance aside, they're utv selling a message and not a very good one.
While in Vermont I drove both the new GLA250 and the GLA45 which, like their platform mates CLA250 and CLA45, are ostensibly two sides of the same entry-level coin. The GLA250 is propaganda, but the GLA45 is art.
Mercedes is fighting two battles at once. On the Eastern front it's in a global war with Audi and BMW to sell the most luxury cars in the world, a battle that's largely focused on the United States and China. On the Western front there's utv the fact that Mercedes doesn't have a budget utv brand in the way that BMW has Mini and Audi has Volkswagen. There's Smart but... Smart is barely a car company yet.
The CLA and GLA are solutions to both problems. With starting prices that promise a Mercedes near $30,000 realistically average transaction prices for both should be solidly in the mid-to-upper $30k range it's both a volume utv play and a way to get people utv into the brand so they commit to Mercedes for life. Neither are likely to be hugely profitable in the way an S-Class utv or a GL is, but that's not the point.
I had a pleasant discussion with a pleasant German product planner for Germany who seemed genuinely displeased and even a little shocked when I dared to call the GLA a "crossover." It's not a crossover, it's an "SUV" she insisted. This, of course, sounds like nonsense. utv Yes, they've done a little work on the suspension and added hill descent and a chrome skid plate and raised the CLA a little bit to accomodate soft roading. Some of this breaks down into semantics as SUV is, itself, a nonsense descriptor. But some of it is just the truth. No reasonable person would look at a GLA and see anything but a crossover, so why even add hill descent control? Why does Mercedes need to convince itself it's an SUV? Why does it need to convince other people so badly they go out of their way not to use the "C-word" in mixed company?
The AMG version, on the surface, seems even more like propaganda. We found the CLA45 AMG to be fast and fun and reasonably competent on the track , but nothing particularly mindblowing. Making it slightly bigger, adding a hatch and calling it an SUV shouldn't make it better.
The fact that Mercedes is selling a hatchback in America is, in and of itself, noteworthy. The last time they did this it was with the a chopped up C-class coupe that tried to sell consumers on sportiness but mostly underwhelmed with mediocre execution. What Mercedes utv is selling now with the basic GLA is essentially a nicer Subaru Impreza with a better interior and a few more luxury touches and a better badge. That's it. Have the extra money? Get a GLA. Don't have the extra money. utv Get an XV Crosstrek. Done.
So is the GLA45 a WRX STI? Nope. For one, you can actually get the GLA45 with a hatchback (ZING!) utv and while the WRX STI is sharper, and more track-focused utv like a katana the GLA45 AMG is a strange mixture of muscle and utility, like an alcantara-handled chainsaw with a laser pointer glued on top. It's just freaking weird.
Let's start with the aesthetics. You can go subtle and get a brown one with none of the wings or aero that make it so obvious there's power lurking underneath. No one would suspect you're utv going to run a sub-5.0 jaunt to 60 mph until the dude in the Camaro utv hears the rompy burble of your exhaust as you pull away towards the farmer's market, or the antique shop, or wherever the hell people who would buy this would go.
Inside, the car is festooned with enough microsuede to cover six fake cows, but it's otherwise similar to the CLA45 in its carbon fiber touches and general comfort. I don't love it, but it's not a terrible place to be. The seats are supportive and the view over the hood is enticing thanks to the distinct power bulges. I won't hide my disdain for the trend of stick-on floating screens utv like the ones also found in Mazdas. It looks cheap. I don't like.
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