Mercedes-Benz GLC review

Owners of the previous car will find a familiar space inside the latest GLC – much of the car seems more like a deep facelift rather than an all-new interpretation. Up front are many familiar elements, though perhaps not in the same layout. The touchscreen is much larger, for instance, and better integrated on the whole.

The familiar Mercedes air vents have been posted to more of a background role and the space between the front seats is a little bit tidier. There’s no touchpad or set of buttons to control anything on the screen, it’s fingers only, so you’ll probably want to stash a microfibre cloth away somewhere for a quick wipe at the lights.

Is the touchscreen a nightmare to use?

It’s largely a successful effort here – like many manufacturers Mercedes has opted to get rid of buttons and shift those functions to the infotainment. The screen works quickly and the graphics are fairly clear across the board. However, the steering wheel touch panels remain a significant bugbear: awkwardly angled for thumbs, hard to press and not a patch on the old physical buttons and rotary controllers. If you’re not getting on with them, there’s always the ‘Hey Mercedes’ voice control function. Yeah, it’s every bit as patchy as you expect it to be.

What about other tech?

We’re not saying that Mercedes is adding tech features for the sake of it, but there’s a fingerprint scanner below the central touchscreen so you can log into your MBUX profile with saved favourite destinations, car settings and other things. Mercedes also touts over-the-air capability that will mean you can buy software upgrades for new features on the car even after the company has sold it to you. So that’s something to look forward to.

What’s the space like inside?

There’s adequate room in the back for kids and adults, but the hard plastic backs of the front seats don’t exactly give it a luxury ambience and the extra 2mm of legroom promised in the facelift is hardly generous. Plus the middle passenger still has to straddle a sizeable transmission tunnel and cope with a narrow perch.

The boot is a pretty decent size: there’s 70 litres of extra space on the old car, which makes for 620 litres with the seats up. However… the PHEVs have their battery at the back and thus lose not only the cavernous space under the boot floor, but suffer from a higher floor altogether that drops load space to 400 litres with the seats up. The hybrid system may be good, but there’s an argument that too much space has been sacrificed to the 31.2kWh battery.