Mercedes-Benz GLS 2019 Review — International

There’s a new ultra-big, super-luxury SUV genre in town and it takes up more than its fair share of town, too. The budding limousine-style SUV ranks now includes the Bentley Bentayga, Rolls-Royce Cullinan, BMW X7 and, now, the new-generation Mercedes-Benz GLS. No, Audi’s not here yet.

They’re all huge and heavy and they all have pretensions to usurp the limousine establishment (often with a pre-emptive strike against each other that will inevitably hit their own flagships).

The new class act here is the Mercedes-Benz GLS, which will launch with both petrol and diesel straight sixes and becomes the first vehicle in the world to match V8 petrol power with a mild-hybrid electric motor.

Firstly, you’ll have a twin-turbo 4.0-litre petrol V8 with every trick known to Daimler, including turning the GLS 580 into the first V8 in the world to use an integrated starter motor as a mild-hybrid system, punching another 250Nm into the crankshaft at low revs.

The inline six-cylinder petrol engine in the Mercedes-Benz GLS 450 (a model that won’t be sold in Europe at all) uses the same electric motor set-up to deliver extra urge and the 270kW of power and 500Nm of torque from the internal combustion motor is strong, but well short of the V8’s 360kW and 700Nm.

Diesel power will create the heartland of sales (well, outside North America or China) and it will arrive with two versions of the same inline-six turbo-diesel. The first, the GLS 350d, will have 210kW and 600Nm, while the GLS 400d raises the stakes to 243kW and 700Nm.

But the 2020 Mercedes-Benz GLS is about much more than powertrains, borrowing technology from throughout the impressive new GLE large SUV to create a 5207mm-long, 1956mm-wide monster that has most of the ride, luxury and refinement of the S-Class and a surprising amount of off-road savvy.

The thing is: it’s easy to smirk at Benz’s claim to have built the S-Class of SUVs, but it’s a claim that’s disturbingly close to the mark.

It starts from outside, and where BMW took a deliberately provocative design path but Mercedes-Benz went for a cleaner look. Where BMW wanted polarisation, Benz wanted to be inclusive.

Then it moves to the interior, where it has three rows of seats and the choice of either a three-seat 40:20:40 bench seat for the middle row or a pair of single captain’s chairs.

There’s also more luxury here than you’ve ever seen in a Benz SUV, with wonderfully comfortable heated and ventilated seats and even the two-pew third row can be optioned with seat heating, cup-holders, its own air-conditioning controls and four USB sockets. There’s even an in-car communication system so the third-row sitters can talk to the front-row sitters.

Benz claims the rear seats are good for people up to 1.9 metres tall (which I’m not but still found them comfortable enough, though difficult to get out of) and there is still space for up to 355 litres of luggage behind them.

The latest Mercedes-Benz GLS sits on a 3135mm wheelbase, enabling it to deliver 10cm of push-button, fore-aft movement for the middle row of seats. The two rear rows can be folded flat with one push of a button, delivering 2400 litres of luggage space with a 2.22-metre luggage length.

The GLS still boasts 890 litres of luggage space if the third row is down and the middle row of seats are forward by 100mm.

So it’s big, but it’s not dumb. It’s big and smart and genteel, with manners on show pretty much every time you touch anything or ask it to do anything. (In fact, at one point the GLS chimed in to ask if we wanted it to do anything and I told it “Yes, you can (expletive deleted) off” and she just said “OK” and that was that.)

The new GLS runs Benz’s latest MBUX user interface, which is far more intuitive than it once was. If you tell it you’re too hot, it will turn up the air con for you. And that’s with up to five zones for the climate control to work with.

There are 11 USB interfaces on board, turning it into a rolling powerbank, while the side-by-side 12.3-inch dash screens look wonderfully coherent and clear, and there’s also a head-up display and gesture control.

The second row can be ordered with a pair of 11.6-inch Android tablets that recharge in their headrest slots, plus a smaller 7.0-inch unit in the centre console that can manage the telephone, music and navigation systems (and can be overridden by the driver).

The standard audio system clocks in with seven speakers, while two Burmester surround-sound options use either 13 speakers and an extra amplifier or 26 speakers and a subwoofer system under the boot floor. They even amplify speech from one end of the car to the other.

The newest and most obvious (in more ways than one) entrant is the BMW X7. The Germans have been loathe to cross the five-metre barrier, because it’s almost an automatic no-sale in Europe, but America and China have talked them into breaching it and now they’re pouring through the hole.

The X7 is huge, but a touch shorter than the GLS at 5151mm, a touch wider at 2000mm and with a slightly shorter (by just 30mm) 3105mm wheelbase.

There’s no obvious Audi, though, with the Q7 being both older and shorter and the newer Q8 lacking in a third-row option for seating. The Bentayga and the Cullinan both highlight (as if the X7 didn’t) the difficulty in cladding these huge road eaters in attractive bodywork.

That makes the Mercedes-Benz GLS the best looking of a bad bunch, frankly, and Benz is on a winner here. With its clean, softly touched skin sculpting, unfussed grille treatment, chunky LED lighting and clear family links to the GLE, the GLS stands out in the genre for its design integration as much as anything else.

The Mercedes-Benz GLS shares a lot of its skeletal stuff with the just-launched GLE, right down to its inline six-cylinder turbo-petrol and diesel motors, its all-wheel drive systems and its air suspension set-up.

It runs largely the same name-checks on the options list, too, though the Active Body Control and Off-Road packages have been upgraded for GLS work.

The springs are all air chamber units; the standard system operates well enough and it’s convincing. The car automatically lowers by 15mm on highways or in Sport mode, drops by 25mm to make it easier to get in and out of (and to load the luggage area) and it can be raised by 60mm for off-road work.

But the Active Body Control is demonstrably better. It’s at its best at lower speeds but the cameras read the road in stereo, the brain figures out how hard the bump strike will be and orders each individual air spring and damper to compensate for it.

It works remarkably well, and ticking the box for it also includes the Curve function, which tilts the big body in to each corner to stop passenger queasiness in its tracks.

The hardware involved is almost identical to that in the GLE, with front double wishbones at each corner, a four-link rear suspension and a 48-volt electrical system to help drive both the mild-hybrid and the Active Body Control systems.

The Off-Road package now has more tricks up its sleeve, including a driver off-road score system that judges the driver’s performance in hard-core situations, rating gear selection, ride height, steering and throttle inputs and a bunch of other stuff to give you a score between -100 and +100.

It apes a lot of the systems from the GLE, with the exceptions being the new scoring system and some incremental software improvements to the hill-descent system (which Benz calls something different, for Benzish reasons).

Its downhill speed is controlled by the cruise-control buttons and can be toggled down to 2km/h, and it can lift itself up to 90mm high and walk through 600mm of water without breaking stride.

It can rock itself to get out of muddy or sandy bogs, it can bounce its way out of sand and it can even punch pressure down through the air springs onto an airborne tyre, pushing it back onto the ground to get more traction.

This is something the new Mercedes-Benz GLS does really well. It’s a mile-eater, in the way of classic luxury limousines, and it’s wonderfully comfortable.

What it’s not is a sports machine, even in its Sport or Sport+ modes. Get that out of your head straight away (it should be fairly obvious, with the GLS 580 coming in at 2545kg and the lightest of them, the 450, at 2445kg) and you can enjoy what it actually is, rather than railing about what it isn’t.

It’s about comfort and class and, considering its sheer footprint, elegance.

And it works. The nine-speed automatic transmissions were seamless in all three tested powertrains, cutting out the ludicrously (0.6:1) long ninth gear in Sport mode and otherwise slipping calmly through cogs.

The highlight is clearly the V8, which has performance on offer from the instant the throttle pedal is even breathed on.

Benz says the 2.5-tonne machine will whip to 100km/h in 5.3 seconds, which is exactly how it feels. The GLS 450 is a 6.2-second proposition, which is still pretty good given that it’s mighty hefty, while the strongest diesel adds a tenth of a second.

So there’s no shortage of pace in a straight line then, but the impressive thing isn’t the speed but the effortless nature of it, even under the hardest acceleration.

The V8 sings sweetly, but never overtly. It climbs up the instant torque delivery of the electric motor, channels it to each axle through the constantly variable all-wheel drive and then the V8 kicks in with its own strength.

And by then, it’s gone in an unhurried surge of demeanour and manners.

The six-cylinder version is similar, but less smooth and less strong, though still drawn from the very top shelf.

Then there’s the diesel, and it’s so smooth that an average driver would struggle to pick the fuel type without looking at the rev counter.

There is scarcely any noise from the wind, even at more than 150km/h, and the road noise has been stupendously well isolated, especially considering the rubber ranges from 19 to 23 inches.

Where it falls down, ultimately, is in its fun factor as a driver’s car, because it doesn’t bother trying to be what seems a futile exercise in something this big. Its focus is elsewhere and obvious.

Despite the overt concentration on luxury and calm, the GLS never seems overt -- just luxurious and calm. There isn’t a lot of feedback from the steering, but it’s accurate and direct in Sport mode.

The whole car’s baseline is the Comfort mode, though. While Sport feels tauter and a touch crisper and Curve feels eerie and somehow wrong, despite being effective, Comfort mode seems like the engineer’s mode.

The bump absorption is at its best here, the transmission feels utterly dialled in for it and the grip levels are something only lunatics will breach anyway, so that’s nothing to be concerned about.

There is some small chatter over high-frequency bumps, but nothing to worry about, and it calmly holds a line through fast sweeping bends even at high speeds.

Of course, the V8’s fuel consumption isn’t pretty, but it can be eked out well with the starter-generator mild-hybrid motor recharging under brakes or coasting and then pumping energy back through the car. It’s better in urban conditions than it should be.

It also has Benz’s towing pack, meaning it can haul up to 3250kg and it can do the tricky reversing stuff for you. So there’s that.

Before I tested the Mercedes-Benz GLS I had a clear, one-word answer: no. Benz still builds a wonderful large limousine in the S-Class, after all, so it’s not strictly necessary. And the world will one day look upon this genre as hugely indulgent.

And yet it is massively convincing and hits every target its development team gave it, with the one exception of fitting false and non-aligned exhaust tips to the diesel.

So now, just two days later, my clear, one-word answer is (if you’re wedded to this market segment): yes.

How much does the 2019 Mercedes-Benz GLS 580 cost?
Price: TBC
Available: October
Engine: 4.0-litre twin-turbo petrol V8
Output: 360kW/700Nm
Electric output: 16kW/250Nm
Transmission: nine-speed automatic
Fuel: 9.8L/100km
CO2: 223g/km
Safety rating: TBC

How much does the 2019 Mercedes-Benz GLS 450 cost?
Price: TBC
Available: October
Engine: 3.0-litre inline turbo-petrol six-cylinder
Output: 290kW/500Nm
Electric output: 16kW/250Nm
Transmission: Nine-speed automatic
Fuel: TBC
CO2: TBC
Safety rating: TBC

How much does the 2019 Mercedes-Benz GLS 400d cost?
Price: TBC
Available: October
Engine: 3.0-litre inline turbo-diesel six-cylinder
Output: 243kW/700Nm
Transmission: Nine-speed automatic
Fuel: 7.6L/100km
CO2: 201g/km
Safety rating: TBC