Fashion is an interesting thing with which to deal. For a company, following what the clients want on each moment means increasing or decreasing the production, developing new products and technologies, dropping the older ones, and investing a lot on research to find out what needs to be done. It’s an extremely hard path to follow, and yet this has always been what almost everyone wants to do. The reason why? Doing it right means selling what people want to buy. Means this is the best way to maximize the almighty profit.
Since around five years ago, it became just impossible to read about the car world without bumping into at least one mention of the crossovers. The first ones tried to stay half-way between SUVs and urban cars, being nimbler and more comfortable than the first ones but still bigger and tougher than the second, but this concept started to change when other aspects emerged. Factors like costs, regional preferences and the competitor automakers’ activity ended dividing this new category into several new ones. Purists will always prefer the SUVs’ traditional off-road potential, even if it means sacrificing a little comfort. Bigger families, in turn, won’t mind paying more to have their crossovers with seven seats. The other important group is composed by younger drivers, whether married and with young children or friend groups. These will frequently give priority to a modern, trendy design and to lots of technology inside, along with having some worries about the prices. Therefore, since they almost never leave city streets, several automakers don’t even bother to project these compact crossovers with AWD or other off-road items anymore. Instead, they started to take the urban platforms, and now offer really stylish cars like the youngest Mercedes-Benz, but with more friendly prices.
While the automaker is really proud of offering five crossover/SUV vehicles now, you must be thinking if they can be sold together without overlapping each other. There will always be some clients migrating between them, but another fact is that Mercedes has done everything it could do: they all have different purposes. G-Class stays as the tough, old-school off-road, while GL is suitable for (wealthy) bigger families. ML became GL’s sportier sibling over the years, while GLK arrived as some sort of G-Class’ smaller, cheaper and “softer” interpretation. Now, Mercedes decided it was possible to sell an even smaller vehicle, this time using its successful compact-car platform. This is the same one which also generated B-Class, CLA and… Yes, A-Class. This is the probable reason why looking at GLA must be causing you so much déjà vu. People who aren’t interested in cars could easily mistake this one with some sort of “Alltrack” or “XC” version of that hatchback. However, it takes only a longer look to understand that the new crossover has a great personality of its own. The bigger height deserved a complete reinterpretation of the proportions, basically. The front is still short and wide, but combining the wide grille to taller headlights and air intakes, instead of bigger in every dimension, makes this section look nimbler.
The sides reveal Mercedes’ already famous pair of ascending and descending creases, which deals very well with this metal area while helping to give a dynamic feeling. GLA also has a gorgeous silhouette, whose roof is lower and much more round than GLK’s in order to highlight the different personalities. Combining those impressive lights with a big chrome bar helps to add some refinement to the car’s tasteful sportiness, but having such small trunk lid hides the interior’s qualities. The first one is repeating most of the hatchback’s console, including the good-looking two-tone design and those circular air vents. The equipment list will also be pretty much the same, which makes the dimensions the biggest difference between these cars: being 64-mm taller allows GLA to seat its passengers 273 mm higher, while the slight dimension increases converge into bigger space. The trunk, for instance, goes from 421 to 836 liters if the rear bench is folded down. Besides, there’s an optional package that gives an additional “cargo position” to these seats: being steeper gives extra 60 trunk liters without needing to leave these three passengers at home. This car will start with GLA 200 (1.6L, 156 hp), GLA 250 (2.0L, 211 hp), GLA 200 CDI (2.2L, 136 hp) and GLA 220 CDI (2.2L, 170 hp), the latter two using diesel. 4Matic system and dual-clutch automatic transmission will be optional items.
Fashion is an interesting thing with which to deal. For a company, following what the clients want on each moment means increasing or decreasing the production, developing new products and technologies, dropping the older ones, and investing a lot on research to find out what needs to be done. It’s an extremely hard path to follow, and yet this has always been what almost everyone wants to do. The reason why? Doing it right means selling what people want to buy. Means this is the best way to maximize the almighty profit.
