LuxuryCarMagazine En Luxury Car Review and News
Detroit, MI — It really is a fantastic story of one-upmanship.
Mercedes-Benz, which shocked the industry by creating a whole new segment with their CLS “4-door coupe”, finds themselves caught off guard a little by archrival BMW when that company releases its X6 Sports Activity Coupé two years later, combining the uber-popular crossover utility vehicle class with that very same 4-door coupe that Mercedes pioneered.
More recently, BMW delivered another blow by releasing its 4 Series Gran Coupé, which is a close to a perfect matchup with the CLS as you can get. Now, BMW’s up by one, and the X6 is selling like gangbusters.
Which brings us to the present day at the North American International Auto Show, where Mercedes has just debuted its GLE-Class. A more spitting an image of the X6, I cannot recall.
The model shown was officially called the Mercedes-AMG GLE 63 Coupé 4Matic, after a restructuring to better connect Mercedes’ AMG tuning arm with the brand as a whole (a lower-spec, V6-powered GLE 450 was also on-hand). The new 4-door coupé, as Mercedes calls it, is powered by the 5.5 lite, biturbo V8 engine we’ve seen across the line-up in everything from sedans to SUVs, making 557 hp or 585 if you select the “S” version. Both engines are paired with a 7-speed Speedshift Plus automatic transmission, which can be made to shift faster by pressing an “M” button. If that’s not a shot across BMW M-Division’s bow, then I don’t know what is.
Of course 4Matic AWD comes as standard, with a rear-biased 40:60 set-up for an even more performance-oriented feel. There’s air suspension and adaptive dampers, although there’s been no mention of the Magic Body Control, so far seen only on the S-Class sedan.
Then again, that’s a cruiser and Mercedes s painting the GLE as more of a bruiser (just have a look at the fat 325-section rear rubber and optional 22-inch wheels to see what we mean), so the option to select from numerous dynamic drive modes is probably more up the GLE 63’s alley: “Sport Plus”, the most extreme of the five modes, provides sharpness to power delivery and chassis balance, while “Slippery Transmission”—yes, that’s what it’s called—makes for more stability in conditions befitting of an SUV, like snow or mud. How many GLE 63 drivers take their cars to climes that feature a lot of snow and mud remains to be seen, but Canadians will undoubtedly be happy to find that they can dive their GLE even if the tarmac isn’t clear.
Look for the GLE to hit dealers in late summer of ’15 as a 2016 model.
