Four of the awesomest days ever with our new GLA250 for 1,150 km in Germany, Switzerland and Austria. I never thought I鈥檇 be the type to get a Mercedes, let alone pick it up from the factory in Germany. Not that there鈥檚 anything wrong with Mercedes. My grandmother drove a classic, early-鈥?0s 280SE for years, and it was a great car. But they always seemed beyond my means鈥娾€斺€妘ntil this year. The new GLA250 crossover (and CLA250 sedan companion) seems like it has folks like me squarely in its crosshairs. The new entry-level Merc has a tempting starting price. And you can save even more if you pick it up from the factory outside of Stuttgart, Germany. The lease on my Mini Countryman expires next month, so I started doing my research early this year. It was the first time I had leased, and therefore first time I had a hard deadline to make a decision.

Four of the awesomest days ever with our new GLA250 for 1,150 km in Germany, Switzerland and Austria. I never thought I鈥檇 be the type to get a Mercedes, let alone pick it up from the factory in Germany. Not that there鈥檚 anything wrong with Mercedes. My grandmother drove a classic, early-鈥?0s 280SE for years, and it was a great car. But they always seemed beyond my means鈥娾€斺€妘ntil this year. The new GLA250 crossover (and CLA250 sedan companion) seems like it has folks like me squarely in its crosshairs. The new entry-level Merc has a tempting starting price. And you can save even more if you pick it up from the factory outside of Stuttgart, Germany. The lease on my Mini Countryman expires next month, so I started doing my research early this year. It was the first time I had leased, and therefore first time I had a hard deadline to make a decision.

Usually I have in mind exactly what kind of car I want. This time I was all over the place. I even considered another Countryman, this time an S model with a peppier engine. I searched dealer inventory and found that by the time I added all the options I wanted, the price was higher than I was comfortable paying. And they didn鈥檛 even offer some of the newer safety features, like blind spot warning. So I started searching the usual websites, plus Consumer Reports for ideas. I made a list. Then a spreadsheet. I compared my top eight or so cars on price, options, engines, you name it. I was leaning toward a fully-loaded Mazda CX-5. Then, a friend took me to test drive some of my top candidates. He talked me into driving the Mercedes GLA250, which I鈥檇 included on my spreadsheet but all but written off for being too expensive once nicely equipped.

Oh, and I drove it first. Before the GMC, Nissan and Mazda. I was done. It was a dream to drive. Smooth and powerful and comfortable. None of the others compared. I liked it so much, I decided I鈥檇 rather have a lightly equipped Merc than a fully-loaded anything else. Besides, it comes standard with a ton of features, including the safety ones I wanted. While I was on the Mercedes website, building and pricing one for argument鈥檚 sake, I came across a page for their European Delivery Program. Oh, and you can lease with it. Now, normally I would just file this information away. But I was already planning a trip to the UK with my tweenage son in late July. It鈥檚 a short, fairly cheap flight almost anywhere on the Continent from there. Even better, we have friends who own a restaurant in the Swiss Alps, and my son had been wanting to visit. When were we ever going to be able to do that? Maybe we could actually make all of this work. I had a lot of questions.

It was already late March, so our trip was coming up soon. I called a couple local Orange County dealers for more information about the program, but didn鈥檛 get a lot of help. So I consulted Google and found a website for Herbert Haemmer from MB of Escondido near San Diego. He specializes in the European Delivery Program and had answers for all of my questions. Herbert and I emailed back and forth for about two weeks, while I also messaged our Swiss friends to coordinate the timing of our potential visit. How cool would it be if this all actually worked? I got an estimated lease payment, but Herbert told me I鈥檇 do the actual finance application in mid-June. That made me a little nervous, but it all worked out as estimated. I researched a ton of flights, and decided to fly in and out of Munich. Within days of my deposit, I got an email and a package from the Mercedes-Benz European Delivery Program.

It was a ton of information, everything from detailed descriptions of how everything would work, to my German registration and a power-of-attorney forms to clear the car through customs. I even got a cool leather wallet for my taxi and meal vouchers. The last week of June, I got all my lease documents via Fed Ex, signed, and returned them. My first payment would be due Sept. Last but not least, I got a folder via FedEx from Herbert. It included another taxi voucher, train tickets from Munich to Stuttgart that he had booked us, and a personalized suggested itinerary. He even included printouts of European traffic signs. On my end, I printed out Google driving directions between each location we planned to visit and put them in a binder, and got the international driver鈥檚 license required in Austria. Oh, and we would have to drive our brand new car onto a train to go through a tunnel into the Alps!