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3
Handling
Performance
Usability
4
Feelgood factor
Readers' rating
2.5
By Anthony ffrench-Constant
First Drives
28 October 2008 12:00
Huntsville, Alabama; where the back of every single neck is a dead ringer for 'Volcanic Splash 4' from the Dulux colour chart, where family trees have only one branch (‘yew kin divorce me, but yawl alwehs be mah sister…’) and where Mercedes took the ostensibly baffling decision to build the very first M-class back in 1997. Odd decision. After all, Deepest South, US of A has never exactly been renowned as hotbed of Teutonic engineering excellence.
Except, of course, it has. Because, in the hope that no one would notice, it was to post-war Huntsville that the Americans hastily spirited the Third Reich’s finest rocket engineers, and the business of enabling Neil Armstrong’s famously small step got under way in earnest. Indeed, even today you’d be hard pushed to find a local hotel without either a sheet steel-origami Lockheed SR-71 on the front lawn or a supine Saturn V rocket, in its toppled entirety, sprawled beside the swimming pool.
Assured, then, of both an enduring engineering pedigree and a workforce happy to be paid in venison, beer and pick-up truck accessories, the only mistake Mercedes made was in not emulating BMW. Up the road in Spartanburg, those responsible for the X5 insisted that all their key suppliers built factories surrounding the main plant. In not following suit, Mercedes condemned those first M-class efforts to, amongst other mild horrors, a life of the worst quality plastics ever to adorn the cabin of a prestige German car.
With unseemly haste, a shift in production of all Europe-bound cars to Graz in Austria saw quality improve no end, and since then the M-class has gone from strength to strength. Even today, with arch foe Range Rover Sport sales plummeting like a banker off an EC1 window ledge, the M-class boasts the segment’s highest sales figures.
Very much the latter, merely designed to add jaunt to the next couple of years. Mild external changes include a restyled front with a re-profiled bumper, new headlamps and jazzier grille, whilst the stern gets tinted tail lights, a revised bumper and a range of exhaust pipe end profiles more varied than Playschool’s windows. It's handsome enough though.
On board the 'new' M-class is even harder to distinguish from its predecessor, though a new seat design proves extremely comfortable, and I’d forgotten just how good rear seat accommodation is in the M-class. Oh, and a new, man-made leather called Artico joins the upholstery options range. Man makes leather, I’m told, out of plastic, doubtless at enormous cost and inconvenience, so that it looks, feels, breathes and even – presumably through the judicious misting of mashed cow juices – smells like the real thing.
Click 'Next' below to read more of our Mercedes M-class facelift first drive
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Mercedes ML320 CDI Sport facelift (2008) CAR review
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flymech1 says
RE: Mercedes ML320 CDI Sport facelift (2008) CAR review
I'm becoming quite the revivalist of old reviews here but as I'm on the market for a new family car I thought I'd post up and see if there's any response by anyone that owns the ML 320 Sport, or indeed any derivative of the ML 320 around this year.... Unfortunately I didn't glean much about it from the controversial review by Mr FF-Constant and was relying on our reviews as consumers to go by. It seems the responses have achieved the same as the initial review, highlighting cultural, geographical and personal misinterpretations and losing the fact that this is a review of the ML 320 CDI... For perspective I'm looking at something with 5 doors, family orientated, 06 to 10 plate (2006 to 2010), around the £22,000 mark and it's to replace a 330ci M Sport and a TT coupe.... (groan). 4WD (or AWD), fun and family practibility with running costs in mind is what I'm after... I started my search with the Audi S3 Sportback and have looked at them and this ML 320 Merc and would love reflection from long term users! No teeth or necks mentioned!!
I'm becoming quite the revivalist of old reviews here but as I'm on the market for a new family car I thought I'd post up and see if there's any response by anyone that owns the ML 320 Sport, or indeed any derivative of the ML 320 around this year.... Unfortunately I didn't glean much about it from the controversial review by Mr FF-Constant and was relying on our reviews as consumers to go by. It seems the responses have achieved the same as the initial review, highlighting cultural, geographical and personal misinterpretations and losing the fact that this is a review of the ML 320 CDI...
For perspective I'm looking at something with 5 doors, family orientated, 06 to 10 plate (2006 to 2010), around the £22,000 mark and it's to replace a 330ci M Sport and a TT coupe.... (groan). 4WD (or AWD), fun and family practibility with running costs in mind is what I'm after... I started my search with the Audi S3 Sportback and have looked at them and this ML 320 Merc and would love reflection from long term users! No teeth or necks mentioned!!
06 January 2011 05:45
helga2600 says
I own an ML420, 2007 with air suspension, set on comfort, the ride is sublime, I am therefore confused by your report, stating that the ride was awful. You must have been driving a BMW X5!
I own an ML420, 2007 with air suspension, set on comfort, the ride is sublime, I am therefore confused by your report, stating that the ride was awful.
You must have been driving a BMW X5!
27 August 2009 22:32
a t o m i c says
Hmmm. I enjoyed the piece in isolation, but the apparent fact that AFF-C mangled his Alabama gegraphy does rather hole it below the water line. Shame, because idiotic clichés and worn-out stereotypes can be both great fun and entirely accurate. As for the strange British "teeth" thing, this is an idea apparently put about by SNL or something similar and has become a staple of US comedy. I can't say I mind it - there's an element of truth insofar as American teens seem to be habitually fitted with jaw-bending braces throughout their ghastly adolescence which confers upon them a generally straighter, whiter set of gnashers than is common in Britain. That said, if you want to see some proper horror-chops I'd invite you to visit sunny Morocco where ultra-sweet tea is consumed like water, lending the average man a scary set of tombstones by the time he's come of age. And as for the (British) Royal family well, quite so, except they're even more stupid, expensive, inbred and utterly pointless than you give them credit for. Anyway, the message that the ML is the piece of junk we all knew it was is loud and clear as ever - another 'car' for people like neither cars nor driving.
03 November 2008 13:48
Alphaman says
sigh... Illustrious sir, As a long-time Huntsville resident, I must complain. Your mischaracterization of Huntsville as the source of the M-class is totally off-base. Said vehicle is manufactured in Vance, Alabama, over 130 miles away from here, on the far side of Birmingham. To blame Huntsville for the cheap plastic interior and handling characteristics of the M-class would be akin to praising London for being the source of the Beatles, or being where the Lusitania was sunk. Fail! We have more than our share of PhD's here in Huntspatch, we've moved our Saturn V indoors thankyouverymuch, and the SR71 is real, save for the lack of engines. Although I do have to admit, the NASA and military complex here does pride itself on hardware and software built by the lowest bidder -- perhaps that's what helped to geo-spatially confuse you into crediting Huntsville with the plastic interior? And they say Americans don't know their geography. Get an atlas, bloke! Respectfully, and with tongue planted firmly in cheek, Aaron
31 October 2008 15:53
JohnnyBimmer says
Ben Whitworth would have been a better appointment for this ML320CDi jolly to the deep South having experienced, fallen in love and ordered the engine in the C-Class. Mr Ffrench-Constant was clearly a bit bored with the Mercedes. You can always tell how excited the journo is by a car by a simple rule of thumb: how many sentances, paragraphs and irrelavent prose does it take to mention the vehicle being reviewed? In this case the ML barely gets a mention until the 4th paragraph, nearly half of the article away! Bored, bored, bored. As for red-knecks I hired a car in florida and was in the central reservation trying to u-turn on the freeway. An obese American 'Mumma' in a Trans-Am was taking forever and a day in front of me to file into traffic. With plenty of room inside I 'undertook' took her and filed onto the freeway with "arrssseehole" ringing in my ears. It was very funny, a true cultural experience if ever there was and I finally felt I'd arrived
29 October 2008 14:04
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