Mercedes-Benz GL SUV hands-on: Cutting edge technology, for a price

Even the cheapest $63,000 GL350 comes with a raft of standard safety features, led by the new (for Mercedes) Collision Prevention Assist, which warns if you’re about to rear-end the guy in front, and, if you step on the brakes, the car will control safe braking. Also new in the MB lineup, and standard, is crosswind stabilization. It corrects for gusts of wind sweeping off a bridge or mountain pass.From automatically correcting for crosswinds, to brief moments of autonomous driving, to sensing that you’re about to fall asleep at the wheel, the 2013 Mercedes-Benz GL SUV offers virtually every technology aid you’ve heard about. There may be no car better suited for long distance travel than the new GL, thanks to the comfy air suspension and whispery diesel engine that carries you 600 miles before refueling. But choose your tech and convenience options wisely to keep the cost under $75,000. The only disappointment in the new GL is the tiny LCD display and mediocre navigation system in a vehicle so big.

Self-driving Mercedes? For a couple seconds at a time it is

The most useful safety option is the Driver Assistance Package ($1,900-$2,800 depending on model) which rolls in Distronic Plus (adaptive cruise control) with Active Lane Keeping Assist and Active Blind Spot Assist. On straight roads with good lane markings, it gives you a semi-self-driving Benz for as long as 30 seconds. Not that you’re supposed to. Here’s how it works: A forward-facing camera in the rear view mirror watches the lane markers and warns, then corrects, if you drift (lane keeping). Distronic maintains your speed and slows, even stops, you if the traffic ahead slows. If you drift close to the lane, the car nudges the brakes on the opposite side and the drag pivots the car back into lane, just as a paddle dragging in the water pivots you canoe toward the paddle side. (The photo above shows the instrument panel display indicating the car about to go off to the right.) If I kept hands off the wheel, the car would right itself two, three or four times in a row but eventually it would ride over the lane marking. Darwin lives.

The “active” part of the option names apply to the corrective actions: the car moving you away from the lane edge (unless your blinker is on) or moving you back into lane if Active Blind Spot Assist sees you drifting into an occupied lane. In either case, a light pull on the heavily boosted power steering overrides the car.

360-degree backing camera, automatic parallel parking

Every car offers parking sonar. The GL one-ups the direct competition with a parking assist package ($1,290) with front and rear sonar plus cameras front-rear-side (in the side mirrors, facing down) to give you a birds-eye view of the car (photo) plus Active Parking Assist, which parallel-parks the GL for you in a spot 60 inches longer than the GL’s 202-inch length. The base GL comes with a rear camera; the parking package may save owners that much in collision deductibles and higher premiums. All the features work perfectly. With parking assist, you drive slowly past a line of cars until the sensors spot an opening 22 feet (6.7m) long. The car beeps, you stop, put the car in reverse, and tap the steering wheel button marked OK. The car steers and measures; you control the throttle and (important) the brakes. One pass gets you into the parking spot.

And more tech: sleepy driver alert, auto-banking in turns

The GL is one of several cars in the Mercedes-Benz fleet with Attention Assist, a set of algorithms that measures driver alertness, mostly through micro-movements of the wheel, and suggests you take a break if you fall below a threshold. I’ve found that Attention Assist catches you when you’re drowsy and also some times when you think you’re not. Attention Assist is free.

The Active Curve System is not free. That’s $2,900. It’s a sophisticated leveraging action of the car’s suspension that reduces lean in turns, makes the driver feel more secure, and makes the passengers less annoyed by spirited driving. Where planes bank into turns so you feel no sideways motion, this reduces but never eliminates lean, in part because the lateral forces alert the driver to back off.

For the most part, if a safety feature is vital, it’s part of the base price of a Mercedes: Collision Prevention Assist but not Distronic adaptive cruise control, Attention Assist but not Active Curve System, which sounds as if Mercedes entered the women’s fitness business. But there enough options that a top-of-the-line GL550 I drove came in at $108,000, and there were some options it didn’t have. With the GL, you can upgrade from a Harman/Kardon surround system to Bang & Olufsen for $6,400, add rear seat entertainment for $1,950, boost the air suspension with adaptive damping for $800, see in the dark with Night Vision Assist Plus for $1,780, and get power-ventilated seats ($570) that suck in moisture from the seat surface where the other vented seats blow air out.

The center stack letdown: small LCD screen, too many buttons

The one area where the GL is uncompetitive is the center stack. The LCD is part of the Comand system that is standard on all GLs and uses a control wheel like BMW’s iDrive . But the LCD is only 7 inches diagonal where it’s 10 inches on the smaller BMW X5 SUV. Because the LCD is small, Mercedes doesn’t do split-screen for, say, navigation plus infotainment. The navigation system is vanilla. If you’re in another screen (say audio setup), when a complex turn approaches, it doesn’t temporarily shift back to map view. In navigation view, you do get a split screen showing the exit but not which lanes exit and which go through.

There are as many as 49 buttons on the center stack and at least eight more on the console (a lot). The Comand control wheel and the radio control wheel are satin metal-finish and a bit slippery. Bluetooth is standard but an iPod adapter is not. (A six-disc CD/DVD changer is. Talk about priorities.) Mercedes counters that almost every GL sold will have a premium package that includes a USB/iPod interface. That’s the bad of the center stack.

Here’s the good. A 4.5-inch color LCD info display sits between the speedometer and tachometer and lets the driver glance down to see important information (phone, navigation, entertainment). Remember how Ford got stuck mailing out hundreds of thousands of USB keys to upgrade its Sync system? Powered by PcSofts .