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You see, the rich kids these days face a big problem. Driving around in a Jazz or a Polo doesn't really highlight their status quotient. Getting out of a C-class or an A4 makes them look like a snob and while the Beetle and Mini do excite the girls, the guys find these cars to be a little too feminine – with a few exceptions to the rule of course – like the Mini Cooper S for example. The blokes at Mercedes Benz understood this problem and so they hired a man called Mark Fetherson to design a car that could fix this issue. So who is this Mark? Well he’s the man who designed the stunning SLS AMG; and his latest baby is called the A-class…
It is a sporty hatchback that will make you sit up and take notice. It comes with two exhaust pipes that highlight its sporty character and the tail lights contribute further with their flashy design and compact size. The rear bumper is simplistic though and makes the A-class look wide. The glasshouse is significantly narrower than the rest of the body and adds to the bottom-heavy design of this car.
The A-class comes with 17-inch alloy wheels that sport a petal design and have a gunmetal finish. They are shod with low-profile tyres that make the A-class sit closer to the ground. The door panels have two creases running across the length of the car. These are inspired by the wind-crafted ripples that you see on sand dunes. These lines add a sense of motion to the A-class even when the car is standing still.
The million-buck-shot though is at the front. This car has got the best design elements from various Mercedes Benz cars around it – making it the most handsome car in the family. The headlights come from the new design language that you see on the latest Mercs. Unlike the M-class and the B-class though, the headlights of the A-class get a string of LEDs than the seamless type. This layout has been chosen because it particularly goes well with the most defining element of the A-class – the diamond grille. Laden with a grid of 302 diamond-shaped rivets, this hypnotic grille could prevent you from looking at any other car. The shape of the grille is very similar to the one on the SLS AMG and thanks to that long nose, you know that the A-class belongs to the same family.
The A-class line-up has been around in the world market for two generations and if you have ever heard anything awful about the A-class, this new model will rubbish all your presumptions. It is a hatchback, yes, but doesn’t look anything like its predecessors. It is low-slung, wide and has a sporty poise. It is the smallest Mercedes Benz car that you will see in recent times – and probably also one of the best looking too!
The front doors of the A-class are large and wide but the roof-line is low so ingress isn’t as easy as the taller B-class. Once inside, you’ll be welcomed by the sporty interior. The SLS AMG inspiration continues inside the A-class as well and therefore the air-vents seem like they have come straight out of Merc’s flagship sports car. The A-class also gets the same tablet device for the COMAND interface – but this one has a funkier mounting. Mercedes Benz also tells us that this version of COMAND is more feature-rich than any of its predecessors and has much stronger iPhone integration. However, our iPhone 5 was not supported and the Merc app on the iPhone 4 would crash too often – so we couldn’t really check the functionality of this app or the iPhone integration. If it works though, this app lets you browse Facebook and Twitter from the COMAND interface itself, update status messages, synchronize satellite navigation, search for points of interests and even listen to internet radio stations using your iPhone’s GPRS connection.
Mercedes Benz also hired a special team of engineers to design the switchgear that you see on the centre console. These blokes studied buttons and switches from various cell-phones and input-output devices to make sure that the feel of the switches feels equally good. But since this car is targeted towards the youth, they should have given complete touch-screen controls instead! Wishful-thinking that. But at least the COMAND interface could have been touch-screen in today’s times. The interface has another set of controls on the steering wheel and you also have a voice-command system. Interestingly, the car will lower the speed of the air-con vents / blowers to make sure that it can hear you clearly when you are speaking out those voice commands. The woman accepting those commands is still as confused as ever, though.
Typical to Mercedes Benz, the gear selector is mounted behind the steering wheel as a stalk. That frees up quite a bit of space between the seats for cubby holes and cup holders. You also expect the mode selector (for the Drive, Sport and Manual modes) to be somewhere behind the steering wheel too. However, that switch is mounted on the centre console. The other elements in the centre console include the switches for the dual-zone climate control, the Start-Stop system and the park assist. Being a Mercedes Benz car you also expect premium interiors. Therefore you get soft plastics on the top and on the dashboard and the surrounds for the instrumentation, the tablet and the A/C vents have a premium feel. As you move further down, the flaps for the storage spaces and the walls of the centre console, feel a tad low-rent.
Other areas where the cost cutting is evident is the low-rent fabric below the panoramic sunroof and the lack of electric adjustments from the front passenger seat. Same isn’t the case with the front driver seat though. You get electric adjustments, three-way memory function and lumbar support. The front seats are also adequately large and have a sportscar-esque design with integrated headrests. The side bolsters are supportive and t
he seats feel good when pushing the car around bends. The seats come with leather upholstery and our test car was clad in an-black scheme, which goes really well with the sporty character of the car.
Move over to the rear bench and you’ll be surprised with the kind of space this small hatchback offers. Even with the front seat moved back to its limit, there is still a fair amount of knee room and foot space for a six-footer. Under-thigh support should have been better though. Headroom at the back seems pretty decent at first, until you realize that the tapering design of glass house brings the edges of the roof really close to your head. So you’ll want to watch your head while getting in and out of the car. The low roof line and the small rear windows might make you feel claustrophobic on long drives as well.
But urban commutes or a short weekend getaway is what the A-class really aims at and the boot affirms that fact. The rear boot has a two-shelf layout with the lower shelf holding all the tools and the jack, while the upper shelf (or the cargo shelf) loses some of its space to the space-saver spare wheel and therefore, don’t expect this boot to swallow large suitcases. While the A-class may look wide, the opening for the boot is pretty narrow. The loading lip is quite low though so throwing in your monthly groceries or shopping bags shouldn’t be too difficult. For your golf or cricket gear though, you might have to drop the rear seats.
The level of luxury that the A-class offers is pretty good for an entry-level luxury compact. Its sporty character adds further aspiration value so this little Mercedes. But does it have a sporty performance too? Read on to find out…
After the B-class, the A-class is the second car that is built on the MFA platform. The petrol version we have tested here comes with the same 1.6-litre engine that powers the B-class. You have a similar power and torque output as well – 122 PS and 200 Nm respectively. You have a similar gearbox too – the 7G-DCT – which is a seven speed, dual clutch transmission. It has the three same modes to choose from – Eco (Drive), Sport and Manual. Unsurprisingly, it has the same problem as the B-class too. The gearbox is quick to upshift but when you put your foot down, it takes a tad longer to react and downshift than what you would expect from a dual-clutch setup. When you select the manual mode, the gearbox just wants to come back into automatic as soon as possible and therefore you will have to spend some time mastering the shift points. Speaking of which, the Eco mode will shift gears in the 2,000-3,000 rev-range for optimum fuel economy, while Sports mode will let you rev much higher. Manual mode will let you go almost to the red-line before it upshifts on its own. Once you get used to the shift points, you have the sporty paddle-shifters for added oomph and convenience.
The A-class also gets the now-common start-stop system to save fuel when you come to a standstill. Mercedes Benz claims a fuel economy of over 15 kmpl with the petrol A-class – however, our enthusiastic runs prevented our car from delivering anything more than 7 kilometers to a litre. Stay in the Eco mode though and you should easily get over 10 kmpl in a regular urban driving cycle.
The 1.6-litre engine isn’t outright sprightly. The low-end feels slightly underpowered, but above 2,000 rpm the engine feels alive. Uphill climbs therefore seem like a task if you are in the wrong rev-range, but out on the highway it isn’t a big deal. Mercedes Benz claims a 0-100 km/h run of 9.2 seconds – which isn’t too bad. Top speed is restricted to 202 km/h. Should you get carried away, there are quite a few safety features to keep things in check. There is the electronic stability program, attention assist and seven airbags – so you needn’t really worry about that narrow roofline. The anti-lock brakes also come with brake assist – so if your car detects that you are too close to the car in front, it will give you full-braking force even on a light tap of the brake pedal!
Since the suspension of the A-class is tuned to offer better give on the Indian road conditions, there is a hint of body roll when you push the car around bends. It isn’t unnerving though. An area of concern for many would be the front wheel drive architecture. Due to its inherent understeer, it isn’t as easy to control as a rear-wheel-driven car when pushing around bends or changing lanes at high speed. But to make sure that the handling doesn’t feel as compromised as you would expect, Mercedes Benz has installed a well-tuned traction control system and acceleration skid prevention system which reduces the understeer when accelerating out of a corner.
So if I were to leave out the wee bit of body roll and the sluggish low-end performance of the engine, the A-class makes a lot of sense for the kind of buyers that it is targeting – that is the young kids or first time buyers to the luxury brand. The car doesn’t overwhelm you with a lot of power and torque, nor do you have the tail sliding around in every corner. With all the safety tech, it is also easy to remain in control of this car while having good fun driving it – what more could you ask from an entry-level luxury compact?
Conclusion
Being the most affordable Mercedes Benz car out there, the A-class is sure to attract a lot of first timers to the luxury brand. It wears that three-pointed star on a beautifully designed compact package, so if you ask me, I think this car is for the fashion-conscious, luxury conscious and image-conscious young guns out there – for this design is sure to turn heads at least for a couple years to come.
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