NEW 2024 Mercedes GLS Review: Is This SUV Just TOO Big? | 4K

oh calm down man people could see us oh my god I'm starting to feel weird and say oh no, no, no, no, no, no, we were

just

off the road, it's not what it seems, it's not what it seems It seems,

this

is the New Mercedes GLS of 108,000 units and it is big, literally, it is one of the largest SUVs in Europe, with seven seats and plenty of space for occupants and cargo. If you're looking for an extra-large, everything-goes-anywhere vehicle, monster, it doesn't get any better than

this

one. probably before you start the

review

, don't forget that Auto Trader can help you buy, sell and lease your next car.

Plus, if you're curious about the value of your current car, we can help too. Go to the website, enter your registration number. and your mileage and we will give you a really accurate rating. Based on data from millions of cars, do it now. The link is below with the program now. If you're wondering what all that bouncing was about at the beginning, we will. let's talk about it in a second or not, we will now, it is a genuine feature, but first let's talk about the design of the GLS

2024

. It has been facelifted, so in the old car it had two large horizontal bars in the front, now you have four large horizontal bars.

At the front with a big three-pointed star in the middle, the grille actually looks much bigger, much beefier and much uglier than on the previous car. You also get these gloss black accents around the redesigned air intakes, but they're not. actually the air intakes are completely fake but they look vaguely cool in contrast and then you have new headlights so these are multi beam LEDs and each one has 114 individual LEDs and apparently these are the brightest headlights allowed by the law if they were If they were brighter, they would actually melt any object within a distance of two meters, that's a lie, but if they were brighter, they would be completely illegal.

If you like driving on dark roads at night this car is for you, now on the side it's a great old beer. It's like standing next to a block of flats that is 5.2m long and taller than me. I'm 5'11 and this thing towers over me huge. You also get some new wheels, these are 23, believe it or not, it doesn't even look in proportion, they look too small, you could probably get away with 26 inches, for goodness sake, before it started to look disproportionate and the wheel designs themselves are quite nice, you get some nice black brake calipers and then they go down the side.

I have these running boards now on most off road SUVs. They're a bit of a gimmick, but in this car they're very useful for getting in and out of this thing because of the height you have to climb through to get into the door handles. Normal door closing sounds great, there is also a soft close which is quite useful. You also get three large windows, one for the front, one for the middle row, and one for the back row. Yes this is a 7 seater car so even the passengers in it the back has a fairly large window which is very useful now around the rear not much has changed to be honest it's a pretty simple rear but still pretty imposing what you get is a set of new taillights which are a bit a bit more attractive than the previous generation and you also get some GLS 450d badges in case you forget which car you bought very very useful the Lower bumper is exactly the same as on the previous car, but I'm going to do it.

I'm going to take my time on this and

just

point out something I really don't like and that is that Mercedes insists on having fake exhausts on their cars now. I just don't understand why I want to say something positive if the positive thing I'm looking for is that if the kids touch the exhaust they won't burn their hands, but you know what's going to happen, don't you think that one day a kid will walk up to a McLaren or a Ferrari and they will touch the exhaust thinking that it is fake and it is safe, they are going to burn their hand and it will all be thanks to Mercedes.

Okay, let's look at the trunk. Well, the trunk space is incredibly impressive. It's a total, believe it or not, of 470 L and that's 144. There's more than there is in a BMW also just for a bunch of junk saved, that's great and then there. There are two sets of buttons, one on each side, that set is for the second row of seats and the other is for controlling the third row of seats. Let me show you that I'm going to press them and what you'll see is the headrest will drop. Oh, and then the seats will fold down and what you'll have is a huge 890 L of space, but if I come back here and press the All button, what it will do is lower all the seats in the second. and the third row simultaneously to transform the GLS from an SUV to a truck, this is also a cool touch.

I'm going to show you this so that the parcel shelf can cover what's in the third row, but if I slide very elegantly here what you'll see is that it can also very easily cover what's in the second row, which is a nice touch , plus it can be folded completely under the boot out of the way - that's huge if you find yourself banished to the third row. It's not as bad as you might expect, the second row folds out quite slowly to make room, so you'll need to be patient, but be careful if there's a baby seat installed there.

Merc says it won't crush your child once they're in. In the back, the space is huge, with seats that can accommodate people up to 1.94m tall, that's 6'3, with plenty of room for the head and decent legroom. You can even slide the second row forward for more legroom than I had here. In the back of the GLS there is plenty of space to rest and relax, good legroom, great headroom because it is very tall and that is despite having a panoramic glass roof, but the roof only goes up to the first and second row, there is no third.

The in-row sunroof like the BMW This is great, the headrest also adjusts electrically. up and down to make sure your head has the optimal contact patch on these beautiful pillows, very, very nice and then in the middle, you've got a charge here, you've got a wireless phone charger, there's no USB around here, buddy. Well, actually there are, but you can charge your phone wirelessly, there's a bit of storage for your loose change and, interestingly, there's a fold-out tablet that lets you control various functions in the car, including the climate, controlling the media playback and even serve as a remote control for these rear seat entertainment screens.

I mean, look at this, that's the off button for that and I can turn this one off too. All it does is kind of double as a controller, so instead of doing it with your finger over here. you can, you can do it here too, which is quite daunting because it's going to cost a lot of money, isn't it about backseat entertainment? I also have a pair of wireless noise canceling headphones. The world has gone silent, these are really nice, but one thing I have noticed is that the build quality can be questionable because someone dropped it, broke it, missed a small clip.

I'm not saying it's Mercedes' fault, but it's someone's fault, right? It's not mine in the front again, it's very similar to the previous generation GLS, but that's not so bad. You've got some really nice wood on the dash, some wood on the center console, and some pretty nice leather on top. There are some changes, although you get a new direction. unfortunately, because this is the one with all the capacitive buttons, so it's a bit annoying and you can accidentally press buttons that you don't want to press when you're driving, but the screen, despite being the same as before, now comes with the latest version of mbu, the software is up to date.

You can also customize the driver's display by pressing the home button on the steering wheel and choose between classic sports navigation and a few other options to make it look exactly how you want it now in terms. of storage is pretty good, you can push this wooden center console back effortlessly like I just did, you will find two cup holders and the interesting thing about these is that they actually heat up and cool down, if you have a hot drink it will keep it warm if you have a cold drink, will keep it nice and cool, nice touch, a cordless phone that charges two USB ports, an old style mouse trackpad, which is an option you don't really have to use, you can just use your finger, so that It's Okay, and then down here you have a large space in the center to carry your things and your things.

You have good ambient lighting if you want it. Yes, pretty decent. Let's drive it. According to Mercedes, the GLS is the S-Class of the SUV world. hence the s in G s and you know what it's not, but it's actually not too far off because the first impression you get from this car is that it's actually quite luxurious, it could easily have felt quite agricultural, but not even a bit, It is very soft. very luxurious the seats are very comfortable they almost feel like armchairs although they actually have a little support the steering is a little heavy but I don't want super light steering in a car that is as big and bulky as This I want to be reminded of the circumference of what I'm driving down the street.

It's pretty quiet. I wouldn't say it's as quiet as an S-Class, especially given the fact that it has 23-inch wheels and is absolutely huge, you can hear quite a bit of road noise through the surface, but it's pretty luxurious considering it's a huge SUV. . You could use it as a car to drive your people around and they definitely wouldn't complain about the suspension being definitely. It's worth talking about, it's nice and luxurious, all cars come with air suspension as standard and before I was bombing some roads with some horrible undulations in the surface and this thing fixed it in no time, so if you live in an area with many potholes or unevenness.

On the roads, you'll barely notice it in this car very soon. I was cut off by a large truck turning on the road and a pickup truck trying to make room for it. Unfortunately, the fan decided to make that gap by backing into the GLS. Well then, geese. it just reversed on me, right, I have to go and deal with this now I think we were lucky, it's strong, it's strong, so that's a testament to how strong the front hood of the Mercedes is, it can actually survive being reversed for a Renault van, we should continue now, as I was saying before I was rudely interrupted by a car accident, you have the option of getting active body control, although it is only available on the mayback version of the GLS and what it does is it lets you Allows you to individually control each corner spring and damping forces to make the suspension even smoother.

It also has a camera system that scans the road for imperfections in the road, and if it identifies imperfections, it can loosen or tighten them. Raise the suspension to ensure you address those imperfections in an ideal way. That feature also allows for the GS's most impressive rebound mode, also known as free ride assist, the idea here is that if you're stuck in sand or mud, the rebound helps you bounce back. It also helps if you want people to think you're getting weird in those huge back seats. It also has a curve function. I don't know why I'm telling you all this, this car doesn't have it, but it does detect it.

In a corner it will actually lean the car 2.6 degrees, a bit like a motorcycle would, so you actually lean into corners very intelligently, but again, this has nothing to do with things this car doesn't. has. Rear wheel steering, so I actually want to check out what it's like to do a three point turn in this car, although I feel like it's going to be more of a three point turn on these narrow field RADS, but let's try it anyway. here we go I'll stop and see how many turns it takes to turn there one point there two point three 4 five I feel like Austin Powers six okay that's a seven point turn yeah back where the steering would have come in Really helpful In this, the 450D's engine is a 3-liter inline-6 ​​diesel that has 367 horsepower and 700 newm of torque.

It'll run on 62, it's a garbage man, look, there's a garbage man in front of me and the gap isn't big enough to go around, I should wait, no, I mean an off-roader, let's get up here, let's go to get up here and go around, that's the beauty of being in a GLS, look, I could barely do it. I feel like, like I was saying, the engine in the 450d is a 3 liter inline 6 with 300, 67 horsepower and a pretty impressive 700 NTM of torque and it will hit 62 mph in 6.1 seconds and 155 mph flat out in terms of responsiveness. I've got some driving modes, let's hit the dynamic switch down here and turn down the delay a little bit.Turbo, but once you're up and moving, it shifts well for a car this big and this heavy, not bad, you don't want it.

It's too cocky in the corners, although it has good grip, but the car weighs 2.8 tonnes and there is a slight feeling of uneasiness, say, when you take a corner too fast, partly due to the mass but also partly due to the fact that you're sitting so high it feels like you're driving a penthouse, but it's still quite capable for a car this size. One of the smart things about this engine is that it has a built-in starter generator which is basically like a small belt-driven engine that basically helps the engine to improve the smoothness and responsiveness of the engine, but also improves fuel consumption.

Economy Mercedes says this car can get 32 ​​MP per gallon depending on what options you put on it specifically, uh, the size of your wheels, but on a day like today, with a driver like me, I'm managing 16.5 MP per gallon and not even I'm not even going that fast, but that figure. It sounds much more realistic than the Mercedes figure. A couple of interesting things I've noticed about this car while driving it is the size of these sun visors is absolutely huge but really useful, particularly nowadays when we have little sun in the winter, which is useful and I also got a neat set of windshield wipers with a system called Magic Vision Control.

Now what it means is that the windshield washers are integrated into the wipers and the water comes out through little laser cut holes, so it keeps the water nice and clean and reduces the amount of water you use but also keeps your visibility at a Normal car, water splashes all over the windshield and that temporarily blinds you until it clears it, but with this it's always visible and the water heats up, so it does a good job. actually removing frost and ice from the windshield is smart, in short I think this is a really cool car, it's huge, it's a bit retroactive, people don't make cars that big especially in Europe, but it's nice to see that Mercedes is still producing great ones.

Seven thick seats that have plenty of room for your things and your people. Some people say you never need an SUV that big, but I disagree if you have seven people to carry and a lot of stuff and occasionally want to go off-roading. There aren't many cars that do it better than a GLS.