Mercedes-Benz GLB 250 V Land Rover Discovery Sport

These two SUVs take a big car ethos and cram it into a compact package. But does it work?

- Cameron Kirby

For many, the concept of good design is somewhat esoteric. If done properly, good design is invisible, so how we interpret and interact with it is – as fictional lawyer Dennis Denuto from The Castle so eloquently states – down to “the vibe of it”.

For new car buyers, the segments most keenly impacted by good, and bad, design are SUVs. Built to cater to the varied demands and needs of a modern family, the smaller the SUV, the greater the need for design ingenuity. Put seven seats into the compact packaging required for innercity living, and well, that’s one hell of a design challenge.

Enter the Mercedes-Benz GLB and Land Rover Discovery Sport, a pair of compact SUVs that must simultaneously attract a high-paying customer with a refined aesthetic, while packaging seven seats into a (relatively) small platform.

The GLB is the newer of the pair, entering the Australian market in the past month with two variants: the entry-level front-drive 200 ($59,900) and more powerful all-wheel-drive 250 tested here ($73,900). An AMG 35 sports flagship will also be available by the end of the year.

Built on the same MFA2 small-car platform as the A-Class, CLA, B-Class, and GLA, the GLB is the largest of Mercedes’ compact family and comes fitted with seven seats as standard. It’s easy to dismiss the GLB’s existence as a niche-filling exercise dreamt up in a boardroom – every third Mercedes-Benz sold globally is an SUV, with every fourth being a compact car, so blending the two is a marketing no-brainer – but there is real merit to the GLB in the real world.