Mercedes’ Mmmm-Class

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — More flummoxing than our galloping craze for sport utility vehicles is the cruel and unusual punishment we suffer for the privilege of riding high, tough and clumsy.

Most 4WDs have the moves and parking precision of an elderly tugboat. Gainly is not their job description. So you clamber in, you tumble out, you pay $40 to fill it up with gas.

And no person knows buyer remorse until he or she has spent $65,000 on a recycled military vehicle and discovered it doesn’t have air bags, anti-lock brakes or a warranty against hearing loss from tire and transmission din.

“But people, particularly Americans, just love the sense of independence a sport utility gives them,” says Michael Jackson, president of Mercedes-Benz of North America. So it’s not all security and sitting aloof over minions in their Honda Accords? “No. It’s going any time, anywhere they want to go. It’s part of the American culture, and Americans have been willing to put up with a lot to exercise that culture.”

Until now, he believes.

Or, until September, when Mercedes-Benz introduces the 1998 ML320, the first of its long-anticipated M-Class series of urban-cum-suburban mud puppies.

And as a rare off-roader that is not based on an existing truck body, and is not a rushed, re-badged luxury version of something vinyl and mainstream, the sporty and utilitarian ML320 seems poised to move through the clotted ranks of off-roaders the way Sherman marched through Georgia, Tennessee and the Carolinas.

(Historical rumor has it that Alabama was spared because William Tecumseh Sherman knew Mercedes eventually would build its M-Class plant at Tuscaloosa and he wanted to be first in line for a smoking deal.)

Now, let it be accepted that Mercedes never has concerned itself with inexpensive, populist vehicles and broad assaults against the rest of the world. Nor will it risk its century of heritage based on quality, reliability and durability by hurrying low-bid, jury-rigged products to market.

Ergo, the ML320 is not designed to arm-wrestle the Jeep Wrangler and others nibbling at the cheese-and-crackers end of the food chain.

Instead, it is focused on a spot within the luxury sport utility niche where prices quiver north and south of $35,000--which is a few bucks north of the $34,000 Infiniti QX4, though still a long way south of the $55,000 Range Rover--and there remains some profitable wriggling room.

That sees the ML320 locking bumpers with Jeep’s Grand Cherokee and Ford’s Explorer Limited, two well-selling vehicles that nonetheless still fit the sport utility stereotype of heaving, thirsty off-roaders for people who play in the dirt with the same frequency that the Dodgers shut out Atlanta.

In such company--and at an estimated base price of $35,000, rising to a projected $40,000 for something with trinkets--the 215-horsepower, V-6-powered ML320 is affordable.

Among other assets:

* Although other sport utes brag about independent front-wheel suspensions and car-like rides, Mercedes has built the world’s first rough-and-tumbler with independent four-wheel suspension for the precise ride of a German-built sedan.

* The Mercedes delivers an estimated 17 mpg in town, 23 mpg on a haul--compared to 15 and 18 mpg for a V-6-powered Acura SLX.

* Front air bags are standard equipment on luxury sport utilities--but only the ML320 is fitted with side air bags for driver and front seat passenger.

* Grand Cherokee and Land Rover Discovery, along with most of the sport utility pack, are stuck with 4-speed automatics--while Mercedes transmits power through a 5-speed automatic. It’s smoother than kitten fur when shifting up or being kicked down, and five gears supply longer legs on highways and tougher muscles in the muck.

* And as part of the company’s recent manufacturing make-over--and calculated departure from excesses of price, engineering and stuffiness--the ML320 shines with a definite sense of fun. Yet it remains carefully assembled, is built from quality fabrics and leathers, and still displays a slight plod to its passage and portage so there’s no mistaking this as anything but a true, purposeful product of Mercedes.

“We think we’re first with an unmistakable message to a new, unserved segment of the market,” insists Jackson, with just a touch of Stonewall. “That you can have it all: independence in a sport utility that is a joy to drive, with security and luxury, with passenger car handling, but allowing no shortcuts or compromises.”

Initial response to that message has been a clamor. Newport Imports reports more than 300 advance orders; Phoenix Motors has logged 200 deposits--from customers who have yet to touch the vehicle in the steely flesh. All of which reinforces the point that the ML320 may be the icon sport utility that the industry has been struggling to build since Day 1 of our infatuation for the boxy and big-wheeled.

*

Visually--and with many of those visuals drawn by Mercedes’ Advanced Design studio in Irvine--the car knocks off several vehicles. Fortunately, it emulates only Mercedes vehicles, and that’s a convenient way to preserve the family likeness.

Large, wraparound headlights are huge doe eyes, suggesting both the SLK roadster and Roswell aliens. Front fender lines ease and squeeze into the windshield pillars, as they do on the mighty Mercedes SL convertibles. The grille is horizontal with an oversize three-pointed star lifted from the famed 300SL of the ‘50s. The cross bars are drilled, black and reminiscent of the Gelandewagen, a mini-brute of a military vehicle built by Mercedes-Benz.

(The G-Wagen, incidentally, is a grand sucker bet should you run into someone who believes Mercedes has no experience with building four-wheel drivers. For double or nothing, ask the height and weight of Mercedes’ 8-foot-tall, 7-ton Unimog.)

Overall, the silhouette is a little humpbacked and Cubist, a negative to some, but that’s the stern, disciplined look driving the market these days. Edges are nicely rounded, and the whole is deceiving because the ML320 looks small but seats five comfortably and is 3 inches taller than Ford Explorer.

And with the three rear seats easily folded flat and forward, the ML320 will swallow more grocery bags and domestic livestock than the Grand Cherokee, Chevy Blazer and Honda Passport.

The ML320’s interior is an auto critic’s nightmare because there’s nothing to criticize. Dashboard, seat, panel and carpet tailoring are rich and perfect, with the smell and feel of a six-figure bank balance. Think where a window, door, radio, seat or console control should be, and that’s exactly where fingertips will find it.

Front bucket seats are broad and flexibly--almost magically--contoured for all lengths of leg and breadths of butt. There are even 3 inches of fore and aft travel to the back seats; a pair of slap-down occasional seats for the rear cargo bay will be available further into the production cycle. Also as a retrofit.

The 3.2-liter V-6 (a 270-horsepower, 4.3-liter V-8 is planned for next year’s vehicle) is an innovative system using three valves (instead of four) and two spark plugs (instead of one) per cylinder. That, say Mercedes engineers, produces an engine that burns cleaner and uses less fuel.

*

If you have driven any small or mid-size Mercedes, you have driven the ML320. Highway cruising is subdued, elegant and unfussy. Freeway maneuvering is flat, and control of forward progress by steering, braking or shifting is smooth, positive, absolute. And therein a subtle danger.

For the level pavement ride is such replication of, say, an E320 sedan that one is lulled into using precisely the same control pressures and effort when on twisty bits. Reminders that the ML320 is considerably taller and shorter--and 600 pounds heavier--than its E-Class cousin are instant and may even be embarrassing.

On the other hand, towing a 5,000-pound bass boat behind an E320 can be equally bewildering.

Mercedes couldn’t have picked worse--therefore better--weather conditions for last month’s media baptism of the M-Class. What areas of Alabama hadn’t been massaged by tornadoes had been made Lake Corn Pone by several weeks of monsoons.

The ML320--pitched into low range by the touch of a dashboard button--played happily in the red mud pudding. It dog-paddled through hub-high potholes, forded streams with water slopping halfway up the door sills, and traversed slick hummocks with only three wheels ground-bound and traction controls grinning broadly. As a matter of fact, thanks to its first-in-class traction control, the vehicle will amble along when only one wheel has something to cling to.

One stretch of muddy trail was a long, descending, 1-in-2 grade. That’s as close to vertical as one ever needs to be in any form of travel except an elevator.

But watch this. Set the gearbox in first, low range. The ML320 senses the wheel slithers and severe snoot-down attitude, and automatically jams the throttle setting to ultra-low crawl. All the dumb driver has to do is stay off the brakes, stay off the gas and steer while the vehicle loafs downhill like a bug on a rope.

Such extremes are not for the wide-eyed, but then the ML320 was designed more for level, solid surfaces than for climbing the wild and squishy. Which is obvious by the vehicle’s approach and departure angles--28.9 and 26.0 degrees respectively--considerably inferior to others in the field. Although with 8.1 inches of clearance, the ML rides as high as the Land Rover Discovery, higher than Nissan Pathfinder, but much lower than the high-stepping Lexus LX450. And it has several more horsepower than other sixes.

Last year, Americans purchased more than 2 million sport utility vehicles--double the 1992 total. The two best-selling vehicles in the U.S. are trucks, followed by the Ford Explorer. Experts predict that by 2000, there will be 50 sport utility models on the market--including one from Porsche.

Some claim the market is poised to implode, and that even with so much, Mercedes-Benz may have waited too long.

Jackson, naturally, doesn’t agree.

“At a certain point, sales will plateau,” he says. But demands for luxury sport utility vehicles have evolved into a close match of luxury cars sales, he adds, and Mercedes-Benz owners are hungry for an off-roader carrying their badge. “So even if the market plateaus, it’s not going away and will still be a very large market for us.”

Unless, of course, Rolls-Royce and Ferrari come out with $22,000 bog buggies.

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1998 Mercedes-Benz ML320

The Good: Finally, a sport utility that’s a sedan on pavement and a bulldog in mud puddles. Proof that there’s more to this market than hurried rebadging of somebody else’s off-roader that used to be a truck. Styling well dipped in Mercedes gene pool. And this is a domestic vehicle.

The Bad: Only questions: Has Mercedes left it too late? Is styling too boxy?

The Ugly: Still looking.

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1998 Mercedes-Benz ML320

Cost

* Base: $35,000, estimated. (Includes anti-lock disc brakes, front and side air bags, 16-inch aluminum wheels, central locking, alarm, power mirrors and doors, air-conditioning, five-speed automatic, cruise control, tilt steering, reading and cargo lamps, center console, roof rack and retractable cargo cover, and five-speed automatic transmission.)

* As tested: $40,000, estimated. (Adds leather, heated, 8-way power seats. Also walnut dashboard and console trim, Bose sound system, trailer hitch.)

Engine

* 3.2-liter, 18-valve, twin-ignition V-6, with single overhead cams and developing 215 horsepower.

Type

* Front-engine, all-wheel drive, four-door, mid-size luxury sport utility.

Performance

* 0-60 mph, as tested, 9.6 seconds.

* Top speed, 118 mph, electronically governed.

* Fuel consumption, city and highway, estimated, 17 and 23 mpg.

Curb Weight

* 4,200 pounds.