Polished crossover from Merc

The thing with “golden ages” is you never really know you’re in one until it’s over.

Harold McMillan might have once told the electorate in 1957 that they’d never had it so good, but would you forgo your smartphone, the internet, modern healthcare and your reliable airconditioned car to return to an age when we had only just stopped meat and petrol rationing? Golden ages depend on your perspective.

Yet Mercedes-Benz are in one right now. There’s genuine depth of talent right across the Stuttgart maker’s range and it’s increasingly hard to spot a duffer.

Wind the clock back a few years and the clunkers were easy to identify. Now they’ve been surgically excised. One glaring black hole in the Mercedes line-up – in the UK at least – was the lack of a small Crossover model to go head to head with the likes of the Audi Q3 and BMW X1.

That policy has changed with the introduction of this shapely GLA model.

The GLA isn’t very SUV-like. It’s rounded and looks more like an A-Class that’s been working out at the gym than anything particularly hardcore.

Changes made to this revised model include modified bumpers, smarter alloy wheels and the option of full-LED headlights. As before, smart GLAspecific touches include the way the stylists have teased out the wheel arches, adding muscularity to the look. And the sleek integration of the standard aluminium roof rails.

Mercedes has worked extremely hard to make the GLA one of the cheapest cars to run in its class, efforts aided by the fact all the engines on offer feature direct injection and turbocharging, plus a start/stop system that cuts the engine when you’re stuck in traffic or waiting at the lights.

Mainstream GLA buyers looking at 2.1-litre diesel and 2.0-litre petrol models will need a budget starting from around £26,000 to £27,000 and ranging up to around £38,000 for a well equipped model. Dedicated followers of the brand can consider paying up to around £47,000 for the Mercedes-AMG flagship version.

The entry-level GLA 200d delivers the sort of returns more usually associated with a supermini – 67.3 miles from a gallon of diesel on the combined cycle and around 110g/km of carbon dioxide.

It’s genuinely hard to see how the Mercedes-Benz GLA can fail, provided you can afford the asking prices.

While some may find its SUV styling a little too toned down for their tastes, it’s far from agricultural which may very well be its appeal to urban buyers.

It’s hard to see how the GLA can fail...