What's all this about?

Mercedes hinted that it was going to do such a thing with a concept car for the Auto Shanghai show in April this year, but now we've got confirmation of a new compact crossover/SUV from the German brand, which is called the GLB. As its name indicates, it's at the smaller end of the Mercedes product scale but it can, nevertheless, optionally seat seven.

What?! How?

It's 4,634mm long, 1,834mm wide, 1,658mm tall and has a wheelbase of 2,829mm, which is 100mm more than you'd find on the pragmatic B-Class. Styling-wise, both inside and out, it follows the usual modern Mercedes memes - such as having the big Widescreen Cockpit with MBUX infotainment within - but the brand's design team would like to point out its short overhangs, rising shoulder-line aft of the C-pillar and doors that cover the sills, preventing the muddying of legs as people get in and out of the car. The seven seats are an option, not standard-fit, but the claim is that people up to 1m 68cm (that's 5ft 6in) can sit back there - so there are two cupholders, two USB ports, curtain airbags and fittings for ISOFIX child seats in row three. The quoted boot capacity, mind, is 560-1,755 litres, but that former figure is clearly for the car in five-seat specification: either without any chairs at all in the boot, or with them folded away for cargo-carrying duties. You only have to look at the associated imagery to see there's nothing like 560 litres of boot space in play with all seven seats in situ.

OK, what about mechanicals?

They'll be almost entirely borrowed from the A-Class and CLA families at launch. They're all turbocharged four-cylinder engines here, with the diesels meeting Real Driving Emissions level 2 legislation due to come into force in 2020, and they're almost all 2.0-litre units coupled up to an eight-speed 8G-DCT dual-clutch automatic gearbox. The exception to two of these rules is the GLB 200 entry-level petrol model, which has 163hp/250Nm from a 1.33-litre engine that drives through a 7G-DCT seven-speed transmission. The only other petrol model so far is the 224hp/350Nm GLB 250, while the diesels are a 150hp/320Nm GLB 200 d and then the 190hp/400Nm GLB 220 d. The petrol GLBs are front-wheel drive, while the diesels can be specified with 4Matic AWD: it's standard on the 250 d and an option on the otherwise front-wheel-drive 200 d. Various off-road and driver-assist safety systems will be on the options list. We have no word yet on acceleration, top speed, fuel economy or tailpipe emissions levels, though.