Mercedes-BENZ X250D
IT MAY have a luxury badge, but the X-class comes with the same tough genes as other utes – ladder-frame chassis, onetonne payload, 3.5-tonne towing capacity – which can make its entry price difficult to swallow. The most affordable fourwheel drive with an auto transmission and the trayback tail will set you back $55,300, which is more than any four-cylinder Amarok. For that you get steel wheels, black bumpers and a vinyl floor.
By the time you stretch to the flagship Power we’re piloting it’s a $64,500 proposition. Even then, you can easily add thousands more; our car, for example, had a black roof lining, aluminium dash trim, a tray liner and a sports bar, things that pushed it well beyond $70K.
Fortunately, the X-class fights back being the first ute to offer autonomous emergency braking, which uses a camera and radar to monitor vehicles ahead and automatically hits the brakes if you forget to. It’s more useful during our nose-to-tail grind from the southern capital, but it may still be handy on country roads. However, peeling on to the craggy Flinders roads it suddenly seems a lot less useful.
No major qualms with how it deals with rough roads, though. The X’s supple yet well controlled suspension contains things nicely, with decent control blended with comfort. That it’s also the quietest of our contenders adds to the ambience. In widening the cabin compared with the Navara it’s based on, Mercedes has also injected more sound-deadening, something that has paid genuine dividends. On bitumen and dirt it’s noticeably quieter than its rivals, the only annoyance being some air rustling off the driver’s window.
It’s the optional 19-inch tyres on our car that took the gloss off the rough road ride. At 255mm wide, the tyres don’t add any more width to the 18s that come standard, but they lower the profile to 55, slightly reducing their off-road suitability. Their size also makes it trickier to find replacement rubber easily in remote areas.
Like the Navara it shares so much with, the X runs coil springs at either end, and it’s the rear-end that has question marks hovering over it. We trialled it with more than