Mercedes ML350 CDI
Luxury SUV emphasises comfort over sporty driving experience
Mercedes’ M-Class is a perfectly capable and comfortable SUV, with lots of space for five and their luggage. It just doesn’t balance comfort and handling as well as its rivals. Like the Porsche, it doesn’t have the Sport’s premium feel, either.
The all-new Mercedes M-Class was launched early last year, but you’d be forgiven for missing the car on the road, because it has very similar styling to its predecessor. That means an upright look compared to the Range Rover Sport.
Our AMG Sport version has deep bumpers front and rear, but the 19-inch alloys seem a little lost in the wheelarches when compared to the big rims on its rivals. At least the car’s slab sides are broken up by some neat lines.
The interior will look familiar to any Merc owner. The silver-trimmed dials have a colour screen set between them, while the audio and climate controls are the same as those found elsewhere in the range. Another colour screen between the air vents tops the dash off, while there’s also a set of rotary dials on the centre console ahead of the armrest. One controls the COMAND system, while the other two select drive modes, but they’re not intuitive.
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Overall, the cabin is well built, but there’s a lot of black plastic around, and when you combine this with our test car’s black seat trim and heavily tinted rear windows, the M-Class starts to feel very oppressive inside.
There’s plenty of space, though. The back seats recline for added comfort, but like the Cayenne, the ML can’t match the Sport for outright room. The standard powered tailgate opens quite slowly, and the 690-litre boot trails the Range Rover’s, but if you flip up the seatbases and drop the backrests, you’ll have up to 2,010 litres to play with.
Under the bonnet, the 254bhp 3.0-litre V6 diesel is 34bhp down on the Range Rover’s engine, yet it has 20Nm more torque, at 620Nm. Combine this with a roughly similar kerbweight to the Sport’s, and the ML350 was just as fast in our acceleration tests. This performance was helped by the fast-shifting seven-speed automatic gearbox – although the transmission doesn’t allow full control of gearchanges like those in rivals. And while the M-Class is fast, it can’t hold a torch to its rivals through corners. Where the Range Rover and Porsche are agile and stable, the big Merc rolls, and although there’s lots of grip, it lapses into understeer more readily.
The Porsche has the measure of the Range Rover for handling, but the Mercedes runs it close for comfort. In Normal mode, the ML is very smooth – on motorways or in cities.
It’s also over £15,000 cheaper to buy than the Range Rover, but like the Porsche, you have to spend big to match the Sport’s kit. Tax costs are high and fuel economy is relatively poor, yet the Merc enjoys strong residuals. Will that allow it to see off its rivals here?
