A-Class Sedan 2019 First Drive Review

A-Class Sedan 2019 First Drive Review

Initially underwhelmed by its exterior styling, we were blown away by A-Class鈥?interior on first impression. Home to a steering wheel pinched from the S-Class limo, the baby Benz also benefits from twin 10.25-inch displays presented under a single pane of glass similar to what you鈥檒l find in the brand鈥檚 flagship. Two-tone leather, textured aluminium and piano black elements in our test example were offset magnificently by customisable 64-colour ambient lighting which wraps around the cabin and key controls. Backlit turbine-style air vents are a particularly nifty touch - turn the temperature up and they briefly glow red; drop the temp and they鈥檒l turn blue before reverting to your preferred colour scheme. Fully-loaded press demonstrators at the model鈥檚 international launch in Seattle featured heated and cooled seats with a massaging function, a high-definition colour head-up display, Burmester surround sound system and more. This doesn鈥檛 feel like a cut-price product. The most important interior feature is Daimler鈥檚 new Mercedes-Benz user experience (MBUX) infotainment system which promises to revolutionise how you interact with the car.

At the risk of oversimplifying a 22-page explainer surrounding the service, there are two key elements to MBUX - how you interact with it and how it interacts with you. The second bit is a little trickier to explain. Essentially, Mercedes has imbued the A-Class with an artificial intelligence system capable of recognising complex speech patterns, along with your personal preferences and routines. Looped into many of the car鈥檚 systems, MBUX allows you to reduce the climate control鈥檚 temperature by saying 鈥淗ey Mercedes,鈥?followed by 鈥淚鈥檓 cold鈥? 鈥渋t鈥檚 freezing鈥?or 鈥渋ncrease temperature to 24 degrees鈥? You can turn on the seat heaters with a simple request, switch between radio stations, ask about tomorrow鈥檚 weather or whether you should expect heavy traffic on the drive home. It feels a little like Apple鈥檚 Siri or Amazon鈥檚 Alexa, both accepting and responding to you in natural phrases. Like those virtual assistants, you can ask MBUX to perform mathematic equations, look up the time in various cities or find the highest-rated coffee shop in your area.

Insiders say you can serve up complex requests along the lines of 鈥淗ey Mercedes, find me a child-friendly pizza restaurant with free WiFi鈥? though our experience wasn鈥檛 so seamless. Intended to learn an individual鈥檚 speech patterns and accent to communicate with them more effectively, the system treads an interesting path by learning about your personal habits. If you like to switch from music to catch hourly news bulletins at a certain time of the day, the car will suggest a change of station to your preferred news provider. If you call your mum every Wednesday night, it might remind you to give her a buzz, to go to the gym, or dial up your favourite take-away food on a Friday night. Naturally, we couldn鈥檛 put all of those features to the test over the course of a two-day drive. Some of those safety features have a less-than-desirable effect on the A-Class' driving experience. We tested the car with 4Matic all-wheel-drive which brings a sophisticated four-link rear suspension arrangement as opposed to the standard car鈥檚 torsion beam rear end.

Our example missed out on adaptive dampers which will be available on local models - and should be seriously considered by anyone who plumps for 19-inch AMG wheels with low-profile tyres. Tested on unfamiliar roads in Washington State, the A-Class serves up a better-resolved ride than its predecessor, with improved body control at speed. That said, it still feels nibbly and far from perfect at low speeds, particularly on broken roads in urban centres. Pirelli P-Zero performance tyres serve up plenty of grip accompanied by a touch more road noise than ideal on coarse surfaces, while traction from the all-wheel-drive variant is beyond reproach on dry tarmac. We tested the car in 2.0-litre A220 form, with a 142kW, 300Nm turbocharged engine under the bonnet. Unfortunately that engine isn鈥檛 on the way to Australia - we鈥檒l get a more modern A200 variant powered by a 1.3-litre four-cylinder turbo engine bringing 120kW and 250Nm outputs. Jointly developed with Renault, which provides the engine block before Mercedes installs modified internals, the new engine is good for an 8.0-second dash to 100km/h along with 5.2L/100km fuel use. Our US variants felt reasonably smooth and refined if a little listless when asked to deliver maximum performance. A seven-speed dual-clutch automatic transmission was excellent 99 per cent of the time, though it did serve up a couple of downchanges which were disappointingly dorky. Just like the hatchback which has already arrived in Australia the sedan shines for its interior and MBUX technology that is ahead of rivals. But it remains to be seen what the spec and driveline will look like and perform against competitors when it lands locally.