Mercedes-Benz GLB 220d 2020 UK review

With seven-seats and a Mercedes badge on its nose, the new GLB is gunning directly for the Land Rover Discovery Sport. How does it stack up in the UK? With the launch of its new GLB compact SUV, Mercedes-Benz has trained its guns directly on Land Rover and its formidable Discovery Sport. For a long while now, the baby Disco’s seven-seat layout and unrivalled off-road ability has allowed Land Rover to enjoy a monopoly of sorts in the premium family SUV market. The GLB, it seems, is here to make the SUV from Gaydon sweat a little.Beneath the GLB’s boxy, baby GLS exterior lies Mercedes’ MFA2 platform - essentially the same architecture that underpins the A-Class hatch and, unsurprisingly, the B-Class compact MPV. Here, however, it’s been stretched out to accommodate the GLB’s third row of seating, so that it’s now a little over 4.6m in length. That makes it longer than a Discovery Sport, don’t you know. There’s a range of four-cylinder petrol and diesel engines to choose from presently; although  a plug-in hybrid, a couple of hotter AMG models, and a fully electric version are all in the pipeline. Here, we’re sampling the range-topping GLB 220d diesel variant, which packs 189bhp and 295lb ft of torque - all of which is deployed to the road via an eight-speed auto ‘box and Mercedes’ 4Matic front-biased four-wheel-drive system. Suspension is by way of MacPherson struts and multiple links, with adaptive dampers available but not optioned on our £43,280 AMG Line Premium test car.