![]() ![]() How many cars need such features? Exactly. How many other cars have a Trail Mode, a lap-timer, and launch control built in? Not many. It’ll tow three and a half tonnes of whatever the hell you like, and there are Snow and Trail modes that these road-biased tyres would rather you left well alone. The switchgear feels dense and expensive – all except the mode-changer knob and toggles which dangle from the steering wheel like plastic testicles.Īs standard there’s heated massaging seats and 64 colours of ambient lighting. ![]() Besides its cosseting manners, it’s an accomplished cruiser, the twin 12.3-inch screen interfaces are crisply annotated, and if you’re a knurling enthusiast, then this interior will bring you out in a hot flush. It’s every bit as home here as it is in the sublime AMG GT R Pro. But this AMG wallop-rocket has a brooding burble at idle and a proper cackle as the revs build. But they wouldn’t be half as cushioning to your backside on the way home. I’m sure if you took it to a track, a Porsche Cayenne Turbo GT or Lamborghini Urus would lap a GLE before its brakes caught fire. In the BMW, you can actually change the brake pedal between Comfort and Sport modes, for no good reason. The GLE takes itself a bit less seriously than others, too. The GLE’s all-wheel drive system can still prioritise the back axle, but it never feels – on dry roads at least – like it’ll unstick itself just to see the look on your face. BMW and Porsche’s hyper-SUVs feel a bit rear-wheel drive, presumably because the engineers would rather be honing super-saloons and want their SUV brethren to have the same ‘don’t make me angry’ mean streak. The GLE rides as pliantly as the Aston DBX and Bentley Bentayga, but costs tens of thousands of pounds less. AMG’s C63 and E63 are magnificent beasts, only let down by their brittle ride in our eyes. ![]() This comfort is by no means a common thing in yer German uber-barge these days. Left in Comfort mode, there’s compliance and sponginess.Īnd yet, when you inevitably arrive at a corner considerably earlier than you had planned, 48-volt anti-roll active suspension ensures the GLE doesn’t keel over, leave you hanging off the side like a dodgy windsurfer. The GLE63S rides on air-sprung multi-mode suspension, and choose to have an awful, teeth-vibrating time if you select Sport Plus mode and run over an insect. Very much unlike the intended customer, who – we all suspect – is going to be of the boot-cut jeans persuasion.įirst, the ride. What sets the GLE apart from all the other absurd German battlecruisers?Ī few things that give it – get this – an agreeable, friendly personality. And when you’ve got more power to deploy than most countries' air forces, you just don’t need nine gears. Drive it in manual mode and the prequel to any headlong charge is about forty-three paddle-clicks to arrive in the correct gear. ![]() And it’ll snort and bellow its way all the way to 175mph. Despite being a few horsies shy of BMW’s equally daft X5 M Competition, the massively torquier GLE63S equals its main rival’s 3.8 second 0-62mph sprint. That 2.1-tonne kerbweight is a trifling inconvenience to be swatted away with a big toe flex. In total, you’ve got 627lb ft under your right foot. Throttle response is fabulously obedient. That’s a whole Mazda MX-5 and quarter’s worth of twist, but this was never an engine that suffered unduly from turbo lag, so the effect of the e-boost is masked. Not really – even though the starter-generator housed between V8 and twin-clutch gearbox is heaping 184lb ft onto the V8’s already muscular efforts. So you can’t feel the hybrid system doing much? After all, the standard GLE is – Mercedes claims – the most aerodynamically slippery SUV in its class, which is like being the Slimmer of the Week in a herd of elephant seal herd. ![]()
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