G. David Felt

While I have my nitpick issues, over all a very sweet ride and I really like the interior. Ya know the German koolaid lovers will also nitpick and move the field goal to justify why the german brands are still better. LOL

Nope not at all, I think many would take a less tech car at a low price point to drive a new reliable ride. After all for an entry level auto, it does not need all the bells and whistles as it is a starter car. Hell if they did this at 12-15,000 with manual door locks and manual windows, it would still sell. This entitlement crap has to end by accepting that you have to work and earn it and it is not given to you. Welcome to the start of your life is my attitude. Heck I would be happy to drive this if I could fit in it as it would be a great commuter and run about car.

That is really sharp looking and would look good on the whole family of CUVs.

Wrong, if you actually read the web site, the Ener-G-Force is the size and concept of a future G-Wagon. Not a Small compact knock off with some style cues from it. GLB is not the Ener-G-Force.

392 badass even sitting still at 24hr fitness.

@smk4565 https://www.mercedes-benz.com/en/mercedes-benz/design/vision-ener-g-force-off-road-for-the-future/ GLB is NOT the Ener-g force concept. To quote their own website!!! New off-road design idiom. “The Ener-G-Force is the vision of an off-roader that, while reflecting tomorrow’s adventures, also invokes the genes of the Mercedes-Benz off-road icon, the G model,” observes Gorden Wagener, Head of Design at Mercedes-Benz Cars. “Modern and cool, it could also be a clue about a new beginning for the off-road design idiom of Mercedes-Benz”.

Very happy to hear they are not letting the engine from the Focus RS go to waste. I wonder how much of a premium this will be over the normal ecoboost engine? Interior looks like a lot of hard plastic and fake carbon fiber. @Drew Dowdell Are you going to go to the show to get first hand impressions and pictures?

That might be true here in the US, but seems to be a very different thing in the Asian rim as well as Europe.

Badge snobs will be badge snobs and pay even though they could get a superior auto for less from another OEM. With that said, you are right, I do believe many will look at the MB offer and then at others and go with others.

Gear Cube

Would totally make sense to use some old hardware, with new tech like Nissan and go after the youth market with a cheap cost car. That is the only way to get butts in the seats again. Love the look in their brown color. Damn sharp interior for this car.

cubed

What is the point your trying to make when the TLX 30,000 beats the CLA 22,556 handsomely? Remember, throwing stones in glass houses is not a good thing.

Love how you are mixing the numbers up again as I talk US and you go to World Wide sales to attempt to Justify the numbers. US Sales Numbers C-Class 2018 sold 60,410 down from the 77,446 in 2017. http://carsalesbase.com/us-car-sales-data/mercedes-benz/mercedes-benz-c-class/ CLA 2018 sold 22,556 up from 20,669 in 2017. http://carsalesbase.com/us-car-sales-data/mercedes-benz/mercedes-benz-cla/ GLA 2018 sold 24,136 up from 24,104 in 2017 but just barely, stagnate most would say. http://carsalesbase.com/us-car-sales-data/mercedes-benz/mercedes-benz-gla/ A-class 2018 sold ZERO in the US. Will be first year for this model in 2019. BUICK CUV's out sell the GLA each one beats it, seems plenty of other nice cars beat the C & A too. Toyota seems to have no problem doing this at those price points.

Best looking Green CUV from MB I have seen yet to date. Interior is Meh! Not sure why but I just do not get the interior design MB puts in them. The steering wheel reminds me of something 1980's, the grab holds on the center section between the seats clearly will be in the way of large people's legs and worse yet make people drop drinks and other stuff as they grab for stuff in the center area. Give them credit for doing a decent vents on this compared to the cheap ass circle ones they have on the cars that reminds me of cheap circle vents on the fords. I do like the large flat screen section of the dash, easy to read, see, etc. Rest looks right for the market, be interesting to see how comfortable the seats are. Exterior I do like and while @smk4565 does not think it will sell in Green, at least here in the PNW Green sells. White does not except to Asians looking for purity. I agree with @balthazar this does NOT look any more luxurious than the Buick.

Could not prove that by me, E and S are the bulk of what I see in the PNW and of course all the variations of their CUVs especially the bargain basement GLA CUVs that are everywhere and are driven bloody slow especially the AMG version. I have never seen an A in the wild and the C while popular maybe 10 years ago, I rarely see any now, if I see one, once a month that is surprising here.

The shine is off the newest fruit of tech love and Tesla is about to get a wake up call as other OEMs start bringing their EVs to market that gives them an electric CUV rather than a car. The car days are over at this time, people want activity vehicles and that usually means a CUV, be it FWD, RWD or AWD. People want the perceived space and versatility that marketing has pushed out for years about a CUV over a car.

Good thing GM and Ford are pretty much going away from this segment as adding in the tech, I just do not see how Ford or GM could justify to build a break even let alone profitable small car like this. They just do not seem to figure out how to built profitable feature rich small cars.

Interesting, if they do end the C7 production, could help push prices up on remaining models for those that want it over the C8. Gonna be interesting to see the final reveal as right now it reminds me TOO MUCH of the Italian Garbage over priced sports cars that I car less about.

So what is the full story? Cause here one of two things would happen. It would be fully restored and end up here: https://www.americascarmuseum.org I spend plenty of hours every year enjoying this place ^^^^ Or one of the High Tech Peeps would take it, restore the outside but electrify it with a nice large Frunk! Around Seattle plenty of old 911 Porsches have been converted over to Electric like this example: https://engineswapdepot.com/?p=13737 eWilly's are very popular here too: http://www.ewillys.com/tag/electric-jeep/

While agree with most of what you both say, I actually take a different spin on this using a perfect example as follows: In the Greater Pacific Northwest, that covers Oregon and Washington state, there used to be a high end Audio / Video dealer called Magnolia HiFi. They only sold top end gear, always had separate rooms setup so that those that want to experience high quality / high priced gear could try it out, then buy and schedule up installation and configuration on site. Magnolia HiFi was founded in 1954 and had 13 top end stores across the PNW. The children were not interested in Audio/Video as their dad, so on Dec 18th 2000 with Revenues topping $100 million a year, Best Buy stepped up and purchased them for $87 Million giving the children a pay day as the father retired. Now Why do I bring this up? Best buy then opened in every store across North America the Boutique Magnolia store within a store. To this day, Best Buy still has great high end gear / sales due to taking the concept of Magnolia and spreading it across the country in every store they have and making sure that that store inside their store is still the best experience ever. This is what I believe GM needs to do with Corvette. Corvette needs to be a Boutique inside of the Chevrolet dealerships that only sells V8 Powered and Electric Powered cars, SUV/CUVs and Trucks. These should ONLY be top of the line best powered performance auto's. The benefit here is that Cheverolet can whore out the rest of the history with entry level to so called SS visual packaged auto's with a bit more power, but when people who do not want the mid level or luxury level names such as GMC, Buick or Cadillac, they step into the Boutique store for a Corvette powered auto. That is who I see GM maximizing the Corvette without creating another division or group that has to be separate from the existing company divisions. In fact, GM needs to figure out the best way and they might have already by just having all GMC / Buick dealerships be a required merged dealership. Is there any more sepereate GMC or Buick sites? I have not seen any in a long time. GM needs to improve marketing for all name brands covering the full product line and not just spend it all on 1 name plate for a few years till another product gets updated and then shift focus. They need Family Coverage Marketing.

Yup just like They still make A,B & C Mercedes? ?

Yet you know Chevrolet will never let the Corvette go away even though they have Camaro.

Simple, to me I say leave Corvette in Chevrolet, but offer Corvette CUV/SUV V8 options. Currently there is no real performance CUV/SUV at Chevy. Corvette is the ultimate performance auto, so why not have a Corvette performance series of vehicles and leave everything else the way it is. Last performance SUV was my Trailblazer SS 6.0L V8 AWD, bloody fast and fun to drive, Chevy has nothing right now to replace it unless you move up to the Heavy RST Tahoe.