What is it?
The most expensive version of Mercedes’ new B-class, the first examples of which have just landed in the UK, before the order books officially open next month. This test in the Mercedes B 200 CDi Sport gives us not only our first shot in a B-class on UK roads, but also our first test of the car in Sport specification, which brings with it shorter, higher-rate springs, uprated dampers and a quicker steering rack.
For a £1300 premium over ‘SE’ trim, ‘Sport’ also buys you a reversing camera, tinted windows, sports seats, 18in wheels with Goodyear runflat tyres, bi-xenon headlights and LED daytime running lights.
What’s it like?
An easy car to get in a muddle over – that’s for sure. The obvious competitor set to rate it against would be made up of five-seat people-movers like the VW Golf Plus, Ford C-Max and Renault Scenic. But when you clap eyes on this new B-class, you’ll realize it’s a more complicated prospect than that.
Mercedes calls the B-class a compact sports tourer, which isn’t a great deal of help. It’s more like a crossover hatchback. Measuring 4359mm in length and 1557mm tall, it’s actually less than 100mm taller, and a solitary millimeter longer, than a Ford Focus. And its closest notional rival is without doubt the Audi A3 Sportback.
There are clear MPV conventions inside the cabin. Mercedes has dispensed with the expensive old B-class’ ‘sandwich platform’, choosing instead a more ordinary underbody arrangement for the new car that has liberated low-level cabin space. So you sit fairly snug in the B-class, almost as low as you would in a normal five-door, but in a fairly upright, bent-legged, MPV-like driving position. There’s plenty of surplus headroom.
Rear passengers enjoy a little more space and comfort than they would in a normal five-door hatchback, with particularly impressive footroom available under the front seats. Provision for a fifth occupant is poor, though. There’s no seven-seat option, and even on flagship versions Mercedes will charge you extra for sliding second-row seats, a ski hatch and a folding front passenger seatback, all parts of its £515 Easy-Vario-Plus option.
So you might quibble over the generosity of this car’s standard specification (cruise control’s an extra, too). And yet the B-class’ cabin creates an impression of tangible richness, quality and value-for-money anyway, comprised of tactile and substantial plastics, chunky and expensive-feeling new switchgear, smooth leathers on the primary controls, and metallic trim flourishes like the air vents and interior doorhandles, which are attractive on the eye and cool to the touch.
At last, one of Daimler’s transverse-engined breed has the kind of interior to make it at least feel like a fully-paid-up, invulnerable Mercedes-Benz. This B-class may be no more impervious to use and the passage of time than the last, but it certainly strikes a much clearer and more convincing impression of quality from the get-go.
Cosseting refinement would probably be next on your wishlist for the perfect baby Benz. If it is, don’t buy a B-class Sport. While other versions may be better in this department, our test car was neither quiet-running nor particularly smooth-riding. Its low-profile runflat tyres crashed quite noisily over broken surfaces, and although its ‘amplitude-selective’ dampers brought better compliance over longer-wave crests and through compressions, the B 200 CDi Sport was disappointingly short on basic rolling comfort for any premium-brand family five-door – modern or otherwise.
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Re: Mercedes B200 CDI Sport
How about allowing taller drivers to sit and see out properly?
How tall are you if I may ask?
I am 6ft3 and I have the old W245 B-class. Its driving position is awful. If I rack the seat up I can hardly see out (at the front looking up, such as at traffic lights, but especially at the back) because the roof is sloping down both at the front and rear.
I once had a police car follow me for quite a few km, the guy asked "did you not see me signaling at you?" errr no. Even though I do look into the mirror (which takes a fair chunk of visual range up front) and into the tiny letterbox sized rear screen rather often.
If I put the seat down, then I feel like I am sitting on the floor, feet just below the level of my bum, knees up, like a go-kart. Not exactly what you look forward to in a family car.
The decent packaging (better than most hatchbacks in the 4.30 range, but not worthy of a proper MPV) and the interior trim (which I find really really good) are my car's only saving grace. The fact that MB has seen it fit to further improve the materials but do nothing to improve packaging and practicality - yet it seems that many people consider the new model a step ahead - probably means that I'm not the typical Mercedes target client.
Well I won't be a Mercedes client anymore, that's for sure...
Re: Mercedes B200 CDI Sport
Re: Mercedes B200 CDI Sport
Erm, is it April 1st?
Surely this is a startup Chinese manufacturer's attempt to design a Western-type upmarket airport taxi: the rear-end of a Golf Mk6 + an ill-prortioned front-end with randomly applied Mercedes styling cues.
Ah, hang on, it is a Mercedes - the most fugly Mercedes, ever.