Mercedes GLB250: The SUV MVP
The 2020 Mercedes GLB250 4MATIC is a SUV MVP. Even though when you look at it and think CUV, Mercedes has labeled this as a true SUV alongside it’s other very similar SUVs. Then again Mercedes has a four door coupe. I was just as confused as you probably are but things changed as I drove it.
If you thought hatchbacks have it difficult with trying to be an all in one Swiss Army knife, the CUV class has taken over that responsibility. Let just call this a CUV because it is in fact a CUV, but much more. It’s got the exterior size of a CUV but that’s where that label ends because inside, it’s got the size of a mid size SUV. The GLB can comfortable haul 5 and actually have the cargo space for those 5 people. Nothing irks us more than when car companies say that they can fit 7 or 8 people in their SUV, but only have the cargo space for grandma’s coin purse. The GLB is thankfully not that as we loaded it up with groceries and our camera gear and had plenty of space for more.
We then come to performance and boy does it have it! Although it only has 221HP and 258 lb-ft of torque, the turbocharger and lighter 8G-DCT 8-speed auto, worked well to make the most out of the small 2.0L inline 4 cylinder. This was the 4MATIC model which helped get the power down to ground in what felt like a rear-biased system. This is where the confusion came into place.The non-4MATIC is actually front wheel drive which usually in the auto world means that the 4WD version would be heavily front biased but thankfully it wasn’t. It’s 0-60 time of 6.9 seconds is pretty impressive considering it’s size and that’s were we start thinking, is this trying to be a sports car? Does one of the checkboxes that a CUV has to mark include sports car like performance? Even if it doesn’t need to, the GLB did! The fuel economy was also impressive with its 23 city, 26 combined, and 31 highway, the auto stop/start function, which I dearly hate in any car, was so smooth that it made me rethink my hatred for them.
After the week, we had come to the conclusion that the GLB250 SUV was in fact an MVP. It had all the great space of an SUV, the small size of a CUV, sports car like performance but with great fuel economy. It was a Swiss Army knife and damn good one!
