The grille was always more than the grille that let cool air flow in to keep your car’s hot-tempered combustion engine from getting too hot. It was a status symbol. That is why he was high and impressive at Mercedes, defying wind and weather with manly tenacity.
So the grille was an acute psychological problem as it became less necessary in the electrical age. How was the Mercedes driver supposed to regain his ego without his solid chrome-plated gravestone on the nose, with the star-shaped brand logo like a weather vane on a steeple? Es ist erreichthe knew, looking at that prestigious ornament on the front of the hood. To the annoyance of his less privileged community, but that was precisely the kick for the wrong upper class. A Mercedes stigmatized you and you could be happy with that if you didn’t give a shit about the fellow man who didn’t grant you your mighty possession.
Don’t immediately shout ‘nouveau riche’. It was precisely people without money who bought such a car, who also wanted that sensation. Nowhere were there so many tenth-hand Mercedes cars driving around as in dirt-poor post-communist Albania. There the grille was the plaster on the wound of a destroyed happiness.
When I think of the Mercedes grille, I think of Gorden Wagener, design chief at Mercedes until last year. I have never met a more German German. We talked about the grille. That brought him to the thinker Kant. He had actually read it and his eye had been caught on the category of the sublime. There, he thought, was what should be a Mercedes. Erhaben stood for impressive without provoking aggression. I could have objected that Mercedes drivers like Idi Amin Dada and Kim Jong-Il had made some dents in that dignity. But I knew Wagener was right. And when he buried the grille with the penultimate generation of plug-in Mercedes, I wondered how long that could last.
Head of a shaver
On those cars, the EQ models, it was replaced by a curved black surface with a grid of decorative Mercedes stars. It looked like the head of a razor. This is probably one of the reasons why the EQ models were not successful. They were too unimpressive for the Mercedes people, perhaps too woke. The razor head, sorry for the toxic diagnostics, was not a symbolic one erection more.
Now the latest electric Mercedes have what they least need, a killer grille. It is closed, so it is mainly there for decoration. On the Mercedes GLC, a medium-sized SUV, it appears as a pimple-like fixture on the nose, evangelized by Mercedes as ‘illuminated high-tech masterpiece‘, ‘exuding prestige and self-confidence‘. It’s lit up at night, what would you have thought? The sublimeness of the past is the bling of today.
BMW drivers don’t have horses. That just slows things down
The GLC doesn’t have to apologize. It’s electric for the new, inclusive person. He gives himself the best without burdening the world with his exhaust fumes. Like the former beginning of that pollutant drama, the grille is finally blemish-free. This must have been one of Wagener’s last acts. It is a biblical tragedy that his swan song restores what may have cost him his job, his betrayal of Kant with the razor head. You can order the GLC with a Vegan Package, an animal-free interior certified by The Vegan Society. A Mercedes has rarely been more sublime, but in a politically correct sense.
You never have to leave again. The cockpit offers enough entertainment for the rest of your life. With the optional Hyperscreen, it becomes one large infotainment cinema with high-resolution visual entertainment for the driver and co-driver, because everyone counts. But the GLC can also do what traditional Mercedes could. It can tow a trailer up to 2,400 kilos. A horse can be behind it. Good, because the Mercedes driver has that. BMW drivers don’t have horses. That just slows things down.
Playfulness is not Mercedes’ strong suit, but those buttons for the electric windows look like whale tails.
Steering wheel controls on double transverse spokes. It takes some getting used to, but the toggle switches on the upper spokes are useful.
The controls for the electrically adjustable seat adjustment at Mercedes have long been chair-shaped, useful for an overview.
• Mercedes logos in an LED circle at the back, so that no one misses which brand this is.
Photo Merlijn Doomernik
That’s why Mercedes-Benz has blessed the GLC with more horsepower than BMW’s competitor, the iX3. That one has 469, this one 489. The GLC accelerates, less so erhaben but it’s fun, reaching 100 as quickly as a Porsche 911 Turbo did before. Don’t do that, because you will exceed your savings target, even though you can drive more than 600 kilometers on a single charge with a careful driving style. This device can really do something, horse people. It is practical and large with a loading space at the front and rear, fast charging up to 330 kW and handles like a sports car. Masterpiece. Come, horse, we’re going on a journey. Thanks for everything, Gordon.
