Filed under: Crossover, Mercedes-Benz, First Drives, Luxury
Littlest G Rocks The Box With Meaningful Improvements
We admit it: It's easy to dig the Mercedes-Benz GLK. Like many of our preferred Jeep models, the GLK presents itself as a true small, rugged all-rounder that you can use just about any way you need. Yes, the rectilinear design is polarizing, but for us, the poles seem to line up more often than not. And, granted, any sort of utility vehicle that presents itself all in white or off-white - inside and out in this tester's case - with 19-inch Pirellis is going to face a ribbing by manly men. Tooth-whitening brightness and fancy shoes aside, anything that aspires to emulate - even peripherally - the rep of the legendary G-Class is welcome anytime in our driveway.
A gnarly strong off-roader? With only a 3.27:1 rear axle available and two overdrive gears, not truly, no. But get the new Offroad Engineering Package on the 4Matic chassis and the GLK thumps along with its 4.38:1 first and 2.86:1 second gears almost as well as a Jeep Grand Cherokee Laredo X 4x4. (We picked that one because the Jeep's base price is right near that of the GLK 350 4Matic and power is roughly the same.) Trouble is that this more rugged GLK package will not be made available in North America any time soon, so the optional $2,000 4Matic all-wheel drive system - with those same ratios - will have to continue to be enough for us.
That's a shame, because our offroad activities in this updated GLK - admittedly executed in a wonderfully torque-filled GLK 350 CDI on 17-inch Bridgestones with the offroad setup prepped specifically for this event - was solid stuff. It seems U.S. dirt country roads with occasional washboarding is realistically the meanest situation envisioned for Yankee GLKs, so U.S. owners are unlikely to know just how capable their vehicle's chassis can be when properly outfitted.
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2013 Mercedes-Benz GLK originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 05 Jun 2012 11:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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