Mercedes GLB 220d
Is this new seven-seat family SUV a better bet than the Land Rover Discovery Sport?
Seven-seat Disco Sport rival
With the launch of the GLB, Mercedes-benz has trained its guns directly on Land Rover and its formidable Discovery Sport. For a long while now, the baby Discovery has occupied an unrivalled niche in the premium family SUV market thanks to its seven-seat layout and immense off-road ability. The GLB, it seems, is here to make the SUV from Gaydon sweat a little.
Beneath the GLB’S boxy, babygls exterior lies Mercedes’ MFA2 platform – essentially the same one that underpins the A-class hatchback and saloon and, unsurprisingly, the B-class compact MPV. Here, however, it has been stretched to accommodate a third row of seating, so that the GLB is a little over 4.6m in length. That makes it longer than the Discovery Sport, don’t you know.
There’s a range of four-cylinder petrol and diesel engines to choose from presently, and a plug-in hybrid, a couple of hot AMG models and an electric EQB are all in the pipeline.
Here, we’re sampling the rangetopping GLB 220d diesel. It packs 187bhp and 295lb ft of torque, all of which is deployed to the road via an eight-speed automatic gearbox and the 4Matic front-biased four-wheel drive system. Suspension is by way of Macpherson struts and multiple links; adaptive dampers are available but weren’t specified on our £43,280 AMG Line Premium test car.
Let’s start with the engine, which is pretty good. It easily outpunches the D180 unit that you get in the equivalent Discovery Sport, although that probably has more to do with the fact that the GLB undercuts the heavyweight Land Rover by the best part of 220kg.
The 220d is slightly more refined under load, too, if not quite as refined as the diesel four-pot engines offered by the Audi Q5 and BMW X1. Also, its automatic gearbox is more decisive than the nine-speeder available in the Discovery Sport, provided you leave it to its own devices.
The GLB handles well for what is quite a tall, slab-sided box on wheels, and while there is a degree of lean through faster corners, you wouldn’t expect otherwise, would you? Either way, it’s no deal-breaker. Grip is good and you don’t find yourself secondguessing your steering inputs.
That said, the Discovery Sport is the sweeter-steering of the two. Where the comparatively light feel of the GLB’S gearing seems to be trying to mask the car’s inflated weight and size, there’s an honesty about the Land Rover’s more relaxed, purposeful helm that really appeals. It makes no apologies for what it is but steers accurately and with plenty of conviction nonetheless.
On passive dampers, the GLB rides in a largely agreeable fashion. It’s not quite as supple as the Discovery Sport through compressions, although neither is it totally unforgiving. It can come over as slightly rigid on particularly rippled and uneven stretches of road but otherwise deals with ruts and bumps pretty well.
Inside, you can see how it’s related to the smaller cars in the Mercedes stable. Lots of shiny black and silver plastics try to inject a bit of pizzazz but, on the whole, it’s the Discovery Sport that looks and feels like a more genuinely upmarket device.
Still, the GLB’S driving position is as commanding as you would expect; there’s decent second-row space; and the 500-litre boot is usefully sized but still considerably smaller than the Land Rover’s hold. Of course, this luggage space diminishes when the third-row seats are in place, but at least there’s room for two extra kids.
The GLB has a fair bit going for it, then. Add in the fact that it undercuts the comparable Discovery Sport on list price (if only just) and that it will easily return a more economical rate of fuel consumption and there’s plenty to like – if not quite as much as there is to like about the British car.