Success in segment with the GLC class
The idea was very good: the new Mercedes-Benz GLK was the only compact SUV to legitimately join the popular but priceless G-class because of its angular body. Unfortunately, the formula didn’t work as well on a smaller scale. Only with the successor GLC class, of which the second generation recently came, did Mercedes-Benz strike the right chord. So how did the GLK not catch on?
Apparently you can’t expect everything that is large and beautiful that smaller casts of it will also be liked. A Boeing 747 is always impressive, but on a business jet size would be the target of ridicule. You would like to see a ukulele in the hands of Brigitte Kaandorp and not in the blessed hands of John Mayer. It also often goes well, as with – to stay with Mercedes-Benz – the SLK, which came out well as a compact alternative to the expensive SL. However, when that scenario was unleashed on the family groundsman, Mercedes wrote a chapter that it probably prefers not to quickly flip back to.
GLK much less popular than competitors
The good community liked the GLK much less than the competition, such as the important X3 of arch-rival BMW after a handful of innocent Japanese models in 2003. Stuttgart had to quickly produce an answer to that. Our test reports soon revealed where the new GLK came in handy in 2008: the appearance. Painful for the manufacturer, who had deliberately modeled the GLK after the example of the highly regarded G-class. And numbers were expected, because the model had a glorious career as an SUV counterpart of the C-class. The GLK was by no means ugly, but it tried to imitate its big, popular brother a little too emphatically (photos 3 and 4). On a night out he would be constantly in his shadow instead of going out on his own. The compact size also made him very cuddly, something you just don’t want as a tough boy.
Half a million built, sold here only 1,700 times
Well, Mercedes built half a million, but in the Netherlands it really didn’t want to go smoothly with the sale. Here the GLK was registered a little more than 1,700 times from 2008 to 2015, against approximately 5,300 BMW’s X3, 7,200 Audi’s Q5 and – hold on – 11,400 Volvo’s XC60. It is a pity that the great success was not forthcoming, because there was little wrong with the GLK, which we remember as a particularly comfortable, characterful and above-average off-road companion. Although he was a bit cramped in the back.
The Mercedes GLK class was built until 2015, 39 are for sale in the used car range on this site.
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– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl