Mercedes-Benz A-Class: The A-Class Problem

Honest confession – this is officially the dead last story to make it into the issue. No exaggeration – this is dead last, it’s not like it was written while pausing the raging printing machine, but you get the drift. The reason was simple. The launch of the A Class and then the impending success of it (we are told 400 units were booked in the first 10 days alone) are both equally baffling.

If you told me two years ago that a car roughly the size of an i20 priced between 21.94-22.74 lakhs would find takers in India, I would’ve laughed myself to an early grave. Now I just shake my head in disappointment and go about my business.

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That was until I sat behind the driver’s seat of one. Ranting apart, right from the elongated nose, the Diamond Mercedes Grill (which comes standard only on the first 400 A-Class cars), the two-third sun roof, the sexiest air ducts in automotive history, ESP, 7 airbags, 17-inch alloy wheels and a cabin that makes you feel like you’re in a sports car are all made with one express objective – making Mercedes Benz palatable for the younger self-drivers. And it could very well have done that.

If you are living in Mumbai or Bangalore, you’d know just how much of a premium space is, no matter where you live in these cities – which is where the A-Class steps in. This is the third generation of the A-Class and such a drastic departure from the previous versions of it that you wouldn’t believe.

The petrol, which we got for an assisted quick spin (we received our own personal babysitter from Mercedes Benz with the car – which proved to be strangely more fun than it sounded) is mated to a 7-speed automatic transmission and even comes with manual paddles in case you don’t want to feel lazy. We didn’t, so we let the car do all the work. In fact, after a couple of runs up and down the unpoliced parts of Delhi suburbs on a busy workday, we decided even pressing the accelerator was too much work and turned on the cruise control. And it’s here that the A-Class becomes most fun. Find the stalk under the combined wiper and indicator stalk and accelerate, decelerate, drive madly – let the car do it for you.

That however, is not what you will be doing. You’d want to drive it yourself because it’s so much fun to drive. The - Class not just looks and sounds better than its sibling the B-Class, it also drives better. During the drive it felt planted even at 170 kmph (we couldn’t do more considering we were pretty much zig-zagging through lane-shunning traffic), which comes up with some effort. Its got a bit of flack for its 1.6 l engine in petrol, which produces 122 bhp, but despite that, the 100 comes up in a mere 9.2 seconds (Merc claims this). Surely the A-Class could’ve benefited from a bigger engine – which it does get in the 2.2 litre diesel. The diesel is also almost ₹80,000 cheaper than the petrol, which is a surprise.

To round things up – no matter where you look at the A-Class from – inside, outside or even under, its drop dead gorgeous (kind of like an Asian girl) and it’s a proper Mercedes Benz. Unfortunately, also like an Asian girl, you tend to wish there was more of it. At least I do.

From the July 2013 issue of FHM India.