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RPM TV Website | March 22, 2024

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One-day Test: Mercedes-Benz GLA45 AMG

Mercedes-Benz GLA45 AMG Mercedes-Benz GLA45 AMG Mercedes-Benz GLA45 AMG
Adam Schoeman

Expectations. I am sure that this one concept has wrecked more dreams than any other. That’s why we have a whole field of study around expectation management: what we expect determines how we experience life.

You could stumble into a small and dilapidated roadside diner, (ok so it was a caravan parked on the side of the road) well away from your normal, fancier hangouts, only to discover that the food is incredible and the owner interesting in his eccentricities.

In reality that experience was positive because as you drove up to it, your only expectation was to steer clear of food poisoning – so anything over and above that was simply a bonus, therefore exceeding expectations.

I feel that Mercedes-Benz is falling into this trap. It is not the one-man-and-his-caravan diner in this example, but the very exclusive French restaurant on the Champs Elysées where everything is so expensive that you literally expect the dishes to cater for your particular preferences so perfectly that the chef would have had to have grown up with you.

Take the A-Class, for example. It was the Mercedes-Benz marque’s first modern premium hatchback, and on top of that the A45 AMG derivative was the most powerful hatchback that money could buy. But it never quite lived up to expectations. There definitely was 265 kW of turbocharged power under the bonnet, but actually harnessing that potential felt a little like fishing for tadpoles with a toothpick: frustrating.

This was my impression the first time I drove an A45 AMG, and I said to myself that maybe its sister car, the GLA45 could achieve what the A45 was trying to do. After all (and this is where I did some expectation management of my own) the GLA is taller and more SUV than hatch, so its image was better suited to the 2,0-litre turbocharged AMG motor’s characteristics.

Today I get to see if that paid off, because that’s the car under scrutiny here.

The GLA45 AMG uses the same 265 kW / 450 Nm 2,0-litre turbocharged engine as the A45 and CLA45 AMG, as well as the same seven-speed dual-clutch gearbox and 4MATIC four-wheel drive system.

It is also shares the A-Class platform, but it’s bigger in all dimensions (12 cm longer than the A-Class hatch, for instance) and in non-AMG guise comes with a softer, more comfortable ride, thanks in part to its raised ride height.

Mercedes-Benz GLA45 AMG

Mercedes-Benz GLA45 AMG

As a driver you therefore sit higher in the compact SUV (Mercedes-Benz doesn’t like it being referred to as a crossover) which should also help with managing those expectations, since SUVs are not sports cars (they are sports vehicles).

Our particular GLA45 AMG came with the optional bucket seats which are the definition of snug, but be warned that they are very firm and could become less than comfortable on longer journeys.

Surprisingly enough, it also came with the optional AMG sports suspension. This blew my mind because the car isn’t some GLA220 CDI with an AMG body kit, but the pinnacle of performance in GLA terms, and so you’d expect the AMG suspension to be standard!

But there is a reason for this being an optional extra: you actually want to avoid it. It takes the GLA’s more forgiving suspension and turns it into a touring car – excellent at swooping through corners but greatly confused by potholes, speed bumps and generally anything else that you would find on our South Africa roads.

Alas, this is only the start of elements that are confusing in the GLA 45 AMG context. While it might be the most powerful crossover you can buy, the amount of boost that needs to emanate from that turbocharger to produce its 265 kW and 450 Nm of torque is not available when the car is idling.

That boost needs to be built up by getting the exhaust gases to spin the turbo, which creates boost – but in the case of the GLA 45, there’s a delay between prompting the engine to get a move on, and the turbo delivering the boost – an affliction known as turbo lag.

The GLA45 AMG has a lot of it, so much so that turning into a busy arterial road becomes almost impossible because the lag prevents you from taking a gap. The dual-clutch gearbox also doesn’t allow you to build some revs (and turbo boost) before releasing the brake.

Yes, you could use the launch control function, but I feel like that is not really a solution to this problem, in the same way that blowing a hole in your isn’t the best way to improve circulation.

The gearbox is still not great, but better than the 7G-Tronic automatic gearboxes that used to be a Mercedes-Benz staple. The cog swaps are quick and precise at the limit but there is still a disconnect between when you want to change gears through the paddles and the ‘box actually getting around to it.

Mercedes-Benz GLA45 AMG

Mercedes-Benz GLA45 AMG

But it is the handling that really lets the GLA45 AMG down. Being all-wheel driven means you approach a corner fast, brake late and point the nose of the car at the corner and not the apex. Then you use the throttle to adjust traction, meaning you come out of the corner with a slight four-wheel drift allowing early acceleration out of the corner. Between the body roll and the traction control, the GLA is not interested in this technique.

Even when the car is set to AMG Sport mode, the traction control is too obtrusive and cuts power to the wheels that are meant to be pulling you out of the corner, leaving you stranded. So I tried adding a little more momentum to the approach to see if I could overcome the traction control but no, then the body roll becomes too pronounces.

You could turn the traction control off completely, but unless your office attire is a helmet, a HANS device and a racing suit, and you have a trophy room at home where you show off the spoils of your driving acumen, I would not recommend it.

In the end, cornering quickly with GLA 45 is frustrating, and while I am sure it is possible, it is not intuitive. Straight-line performance is present in abundance, and the car will dominate anything in its class, but for me the fun factor is just too elusive.

Once again, I think I was expecting too much from the GLA 45 AMG. I assumed that after the hatch version, the GLA would be exactly what I was looking for from Mercedes-Benz, but a panacea it is not.

And how could it be? After all, it is not as if it was hand-built with me in mind, with engineers poring over the suspension travel settings to make sure that there is no body roll but that the ride is still comfortable for the roads I drive.

The GLA 45 AMG does exactly what it says it will. It provides buyers with a slightly taller and larger A-Class that has a lot of power on tap. It would just prefer that it delivers that formula in a different way.

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