2022 Mercedes-Benz GLE 450 Coupe Review - Is a Mercedes Actually Special Anymore?

Hey folks and welcome to the Truck King YouTube channel. Today is exciting because it is the first ever Mercedes-Benz review here on the channel and that means we have a lot to talk about. We are looking at the 2022 GLE 450 Coupe and I want to find out how the all-wheel drive works out here on a snowy Canadian day and we're going to talk about is Mercedes-Benz still truly the pinnacle of luxury. Starting off with the walk around so powering this GLE 450 is a turbocharged inline six mated to a 48 volt mild hybrid system good for 362 horsepower in total and all of that is sent through a nine speed automatic transmission. So the big deal with the model you're looking at here is before 2022 if you wanted the coupe you had to get the AMG that's not true anymore. Now you can get this more base powertrain with the coupe styling and let's roll around to the back because this I think is the most important part of this vehicle this entire thing that's going on right here. Now if you ask me I don't think this looks better than the regular GLE 450. Personally I will take the standard variant not the coupe. The reason they do this is because it's supposed to look better so let's throw it out to you commenters right now. Do you prefer this coupe styling or would you rather have this the standard GLE? Now let's look at the cargo back here so we can open it up by popping that Mercedes badge. Now again when you go for the coupe you get more of this hatchback design so you do get quite a bit of cargo space. You can see the number right here but you don't get the same height that you might get out of the standard model. However it's very deep you have a lot of space in here we got our ice fishing gear here that's our little fish camera down in here you can't quite see it but anyways lots of cargo space. I think maybe what's more important though is let's go climb into the back seat now and see how much space is in there. So I'm shooting the back seat so you know what that means. Does Steve fit? Well let's find out and here's the first thing I got to show you guys. It's all about getting in you have to duck down so much lower because of this coupe styling and for me I really got to squeeze to get my noggin in here and once I'm in I actually do have just enough headroom. Now I stand at six foot two but this seat sits quite low the floor is not too high. I was expecting this to be worse than it actually is but I feel snug in here. I feel like I'm kind of right at the max size but of course I'm bigger than most people which means most people will still fit. Really what you got to look out for is just getting in and out trying not to hit your head on this stupid pillar right here like that. So here we are driving this GLE 450 coupe and the first thing I want to talk about is driving here on the winter snowy roads. Now this thing does have drive modes it doesn't have a snow mode or a wet mode or mud mode we see that a lot lately. No this thing has comfort, sport, eco and then off-road mode so we wanted to see how the all wheel drive system here would actually act in all those modes and you can see a full speed takeoff in all of them right here. So here comes a full speed takeoff in normal mode three two one go and now here's a max speed takeoff in off-road mode three two one go now a full speed takeoff in sport mode three two one go got a little squirrely and now full speed takeoff in eco three two one go. So what you might have noticed is the GLE 450 here is rear wheel drive biased in sport mode it got all squirrely on you right dad it just wanted to step right out. Certainly so yeah that's an important thing to note it's all wheel drive but it wants to send power to the rear now what we found there was with the snow eco mode eco mode is going to be your best mode for the snow because it rolls on the power gradually and I only noticed a little bit of slip out of the rear before the front you know instantly kicked in so that's what I saw what did you feel on those takeoffs? Well for snow eco was the best because it rolled on the power so gradually yeah and actually was also really interesting in off-road mode that was the only one where it sensed the slip and then it was breaking the wheels and almost pulsing the abs to try to give you back traction so on off-road it said we don't want that wheel slip we want to give you max traction but definitely a big difference between all of those different drive modes. And here are all the camera views here on this Mercedes so that is actually for the automatic parking system there's your front wide angle view a front with the side view over here and then you can actually zoom in on the sides or just on the rear using this screen over here as well that's a rear wide view there's your 360 degree cam and back to the front so it's interesting you have this little panel here to choose your views or using the 360 you can just sort of touch wherever it is you want to see and that'll show up over here pretty cool. Like I mentioned off the top this is the first Mercedes Benz product we've had here on the Trucking Channel although dad and I have driven lots of Mercedes in the past but it's been a couple of years for me I haven't driven a Mercedes in at least two years so we're coming at this with a bit of a different perspective you know not having been in these vehicles very often and with that preamble out of the way dad I guess what are your thoughts what have you been feeling you've been driving this thing actually more than I have so uh yeah what's your takeaways? I've been thinking the same thing and in some ways when I started earlier in the week I was like I don't know if I'm I'm qualified to really talk about Mercedes because I just don't drive them that much however this is a $90,000 vehicle and these days $90,000 for some of the high-end pickup trucks is not out of line so I may not understand Mercedes but I do understand dollars so when I start comparing 90 grand and 90 grand I start looking at what they're offering me and of course my first thought always is utility however with the Mercedes what I've gotten out this week is that the amount of comfort and personalization that they're offering in this vehicle I haven't experienced that in say a comparable truck or even a sort of Detroit-based SUV we're talking about seat belts that you can adjust the tension to your personal setting you can heat the door panels or the armrest or you've got kinetic motion for the seats meaning that it rotates your butt every 15 minutes to make sure that you don't uh I don't know your butt doesn't go to sleep and it just goes on and on and on every time you think that okay I know how this system works they've added another little twist to it so that's what I see as being sort of that Mercedes advantage if you're really that person that wants something completely geared to whatever your peculiarities are this is the vehicle to do it yeah I absolutely agree what I've been really comparing it to is something like a Hyundai Palisade because you know we were I think both blown away by that Hyundai it's really nice inside so the the floor of the luxury market has really come up quite a bit so then like to your point how do you set yourself apart well yeah you mentioned all those things there I'll mention a couple more car wash mode I went to a car wash you can hit a button and the Mercedes puts all the windows up turns off the automatic wipers little things like that the colors dad mentioned there are 64 individual colors that you can pick for your interior lighting it's especially striking at night or in the early morning personally I like the one that just cycles through all the colors as you drive but yeah all these little really personalized things that somebody had to think of right some engineer had to think of all these tiny little things and I got another one rain sensing wipers no big deal lots of people have got them however this car actually senses when the windshield's dirty and washes it for you automatically all of that is totally true with the MBUX infotainment system up here there's a whole bunch of different themes that you can choose you can even personalize a theme for yourself and then once your theme is chosen you can just get so much information on your vehicle how much horsepower and torque it is making at any given moment which wheels are being powered and unlike a lot of manufacturers where the the little display that shows you which wheels are getting power is kind of rudimentary here in the mercedes it looks really really good so yeah there's so much information here that it's offering you as well and then you know what else strikes me too dad it also has sort of a quiet mode where most of the things on the screen go away because these days vehicles truly are becoming overwhelming so I like that they're also giving a thought to hey maybe you don't want all this stuff and I think that is nowhere more true than with the head-up display I've never had a head-up display that's given me that much information there's three individual boxes I think each one there's at least three or four different pieces of information you can get up it's like I said it's almost overwhelming I love head-up display I found myself turning off two of the three boxes I just wanted the one in the middle because it's it's too much you see that's the thing is that you get those choices which is like it'll give you all this info or I agree with you I just want basically I just want my speed up there yeah you know and directions if I've got the nav running past that there was a bunch of other stuff that it was like it was just it was too much and I did the same thing I shut it off yeah so I think maybe the big takeaway here is in a broad sense in terms of how vehicles drive these days how quiet they are how good the materials are yeah mercedes isn't really that different anymore but they are different when it comes to all those little details that have been totally thought through yeah that's it exactly because I can tell you that it's very quiet it rides really well and then again if you're me you say well for 90 grand it better so that in itself is not extraordinary or interesting the only one thing I've got to say about the ride and the quietness is that it's way too easy to speed in this thing yeah that's all German vehicles right so now you've heard about all the stuff in here inside the GLE 450 coupe but I want to talk about this whole coupe thing for a second the German manufacturers have been doing this for a number of years it's not a new thing the idea that you put on this coupe styling I keep doing this because it's got four doors I kind of resent the fact that they call it a coupe but that's neither here nor there they put this styling on it and then they say you know what you actually have to pay more to go out and get the coupe which is less practical for me personally I've never understood it I would never buy one of these I would always get the standard version but I guess it's also a very personal choice right what do you what do you feel about it the sad part is you have to remember that practicality really doesn't enter into it it comes down to what do you like all right and at the risk of getting yelled at I don't think high heels that women buy are very practical but that doesn't stop them from buying them and that's the truth when it comes to certain vehicles the guys just I want that look sure so then don't talk to me about practicality because it doesn't make any sense well folks that's it for this one so before you take off though I'd like to hear your opinion on whether you'd like to see more vehicles like this Mercedes on our channel so please go below hit like hit subscribe join to become a member of our channel and remember to give us your comments see you later