It鈥檚 an auto-industry term for any time somebody comes up with a kind of car that didn鈥檛 quite exist before. The Renault Espace and Plymouth Voyager were segment-busters because nobody had done a FWD minivan before. Toyota鈥檚 RAV4 was a segment-buster, too, as was the PT Cruiser. Automakers spend immense time and money trying to create the next one because there鈥檚 nothing quite as profitable as having an effective monopoly on a popular new product. So let me introduce you to a segment-buster that鈥檚 been hiding in plain sight for quite some time. The Mercedes-Benz GLS450 is, nominally speaking, a full-sized SUV, competing heads-up with the Titanosaurs from General Motors, Ford, Toyota, and Nissan. There鈥檚 just one not-so-little difference. Whereas the Escalade, Expedition, Armada, Sequoia, and Land Cruiser are all body-on-frame monsters derived from full-sized pickups or African-oriented workhorses, the GLS and its GL-Class predecessors are unibody products scaled up from the GLE/M-Class SUV. The M-Class ditched its frame with the arrival of the second-generation truck a decade ago and was much better for having done so.

It鈥檚 an auto-industry term for any time somebody comes up with a kind of car that didn鈥檛 quite exist before. The Renault Espace and Plymouth Voyager were segment-busters because nobody had done a FWD minivan before. Toyota鈥檚 RAV4 was a segment-buster, too, as was the PT Cruiser. Automakers spend immense time and money trying to create the next one because there鈥檚 nothing quite as profitable as having an effective monopoly on a popular new product. So let me introduce you to a segment-buster that鈥檚 been hiding in plain sight for quite some time. The Mercedes-Benz GLS450 is, nominally speaking, a full-sized SUV, competing heads-up with the Titanosaurs from General Motors, Ford, Toyota, and Nissan. There鈥檚 just one not-so-little difference. Whereas the Escalade, Expedition, Armada, Sequoia, and Land Cruiser are all body-on-frame monsters derived from full-sized pickups or African-oriented workhorses, the GLS and its GL-Class predecessors are unibody products scaled up from the GLE/M-Class SUV. The M-Class ditched its frame with the arrival of the second-generation truck a decade ago and was much better for having done so.

The detail-oriented among our readers will point out that the current Range Rover is also a unibody vehicle, but the Range Rover is a very different, and considerably more expensive, proposition. The GLS450 starts at less than seventy grand with a reasonable complement of standard equipment, it offers cargo space and interior comfort that is very competitive with the big domestic SUVs, and it can supposedly tow 7,500 pounds without difficulty. There was once a time where the idea of towing anything with a turbo V6 would have seemed ridiculous but we are now in the era of the EcoBoost F-150 and this Mercedes can match it stride for stride. With 362 horsepower, the GLS450 cracks off low fourteen-second quarter-miles unladen. It never felt underpowered during our 1,300 miles of towing; not in Philadelphia-area traffic, not on long grades, not when pulling out to pass semi-trailers. The new 9G-Tronic automatic goes a long way towards making sure the engine is always making boost when you need it, and while it鈥檚 both possible and pleasant to shift manually using the wheel-mounted paddles you don鈥檛 really need to.

The brakes, too, are more than up to the task, never vibrating or fading even after the trailer hydraulics had called it a day. The pedal stays high and the travel stays short, even in the heat of a Jersey summer. Without the car-hauler attached, the GLS stops short in an even bigger hurry. The artificial feel and worrisome 鈥減edal sink鈥?that used to plague electronically-adjusted Benz brakes has been thoroughly exorcised, thankfully. Despite maintaining a fairly ambitious pace for our trips both to and from New Jersey, we recorded better than 15MPG for the entire tow, which is almost exactly what my wife鈥檚 5.3-liter Tahoe manages when it鈥檚 towing nothing at all. Not that the driving experience is comparable to any of the above-mentioned SUVs. If long-time Stuttgart loyalists are put off by the fact that this is a full-sized SUV made in the United States, perhaps they will be slightly mollified by the standard fitment of M-B Tex.

1,610. but anybody who wants to tow or haul with their GLS should save their money and enjoy the finest seating material known to man. It doesn鈥檛 stain, it wipes off clean, and it will probably last until the heat death of the sun. More than any other single feature of this or any other Mercedes-Benz, the M-B Tex upholstery exemplifies the cardinal brand virtues of excellence, durability, and fitness for purpose that made cars like the old W123 sedans justly famous. Don鈥檛 be surprised if the GLS450 ends up earning a similarly respectable reputation in years to come. As a Benz bigot of the old school with a Cosworth 190E in my past, I should be roundly dismissive of what is clearly a sop to the crass, bigger-is-better, SUV-obsessed American market. I recall being utterly horrified by the original ML320, which looked to me like a Euro-market A-class hatch that had been made out of recycled bottles and left to bloat in the sun.