That Special Feeling: The 2020 Mercedes-Benz GLC 300 4MATIC

2020 Mercedes-Benz GLC 300 4MATIC.

Five-passenger SUVs are ubiquitous. Everywhere.  Everyone makes one, everyone sells one.  A good one, well-equipped, is going to be ten grand either side of $50,000.  So how do you choose?

Mercedes-Benz is on a roll right now---making vehicles that, as befits the marque and its heritage, look and feel special---and make the driver feel special, too.

Dressed To Impress: The 2020 Mercedes-Benz GLB 250 4MATIC

2020 Mercedes-Benz GLB 250 4MATIC.

Mercedes has taken the alphabetical approach to naming its SUVs.  They all begin with GL. The smallest is GLA, next is GLB, then GLC. There is no GLD, so GLE comes next and the largest are the GLS and the G-Class.

We had 30 minutes with the GLA three years ago at Western Automotive Journalists' Media Days in Monterey, California and liked it a lot.  Still, the GLB is a major step forward from the entry-level Benz SUV.

Mythbuster: The 2020 Mercedes-Benz CLA250 4MATIC

The 2020 Mercedes-Benz CLA250 4MATIC.

There's a school of thought that says smaller Mercedes-Benz automobiles are lesser vehicles in terms of quality and luxury than their E-Class and S-Class stablemates.  The 2020 Mercedes-Benz CLA250 4MATIC is a four-wheeled rebuttal to that dubious claim.

30 Minutes With: The 2017 Mercedes-Benz GLA 250 4MATIC

The 2017 Mercedes-Benz GLA 250 4MATIC.

Publisher's note:  Normally, the cars you read about here at TireKicker are loaned to us by the press fleets of the various manufacturers for several days.  Seven is typical.  Occasionally, we'll get a longer period of time, and sometimes it'll only be three or four days.  Our "30 Minutes With" series are cars that we spent half an hour behind the wheel of during the just-concluded Western Automotive Journalists Media Days in Monterey, California.

Day one of Media Days is a driving program, with journalists taking cars from the staging area at Quail Lodge in Carmel Valley to Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca via Laureles Grade.  Once there, you swap cars with another journalist for the drive back, and then swap cars again once back at the Quail. Apart from an hour's lunch, this is your day from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.  Each run is about half an hour, and driving 10 to 12 cars back-to-back-to-back gives you interesting points of reference about the next one.

After driving to the Quail from the host hotel, the  Monterey Tides at Sand City, in the 2017 Jaguar XE 35t AWD, it was straight into the 2017 Mercedes-Benz GLA 250 4MATIC.