Test drive Mercedes Benz A-class w169 2004-2007 hatchback

Modern Talking

Less than 7.5 square meters. That is how much a place is occupied by each of the cars taken for a test. And it is biased, this is a female topic when a closet breaks and nothing to wear, but you need to ride on something. Wow, yes?
Who is what
BMW 116
Price of a tested car: 23 322
Max. Power 115 liters. With. at 6000 vol./min
Max. Speed \u200b\u200b200 km/h
Acceleration 0-100 km/h 10.8 s
Mercedes-Benz a 170
Price of a tested car: 19 900
Max. Power 116 l. With. at 5500 vol./min
Max. speed 188 km/h
Acceleration 0-100 km/h 10.9 s
Mini Cooper
Price of a tested car: 29 501
Price in the initial configuration D21 500
Max. Power 115 liters. With. at 6000 vol./min
Max. Speed \u200b\u200b200 km/h
Acceleration 0-100 km/h 10.4 s
All three models are so heterogeneous that each needs to talk about each. But, it should be noted that all three are compact, nimble, stylish and carry premium brands labels, which allows us to talk about them as everyone together. This is a kind of Hi-end in a small grade. From this you can already choose.
 
It becomes painfully painful when choosing only one of three unlikes. For example, buying Mini, you (if an advanced Anglophyl) purchase natural vintage from one type of aircraft tooths on the dashboard, a speedometer-big-Ben in the center of the torpedo and a powerful engine, which can only force this speedometer to work. But you lose the air that could be transported in a mini-salon from a cottage to the house. If you are not advanced, but you need such a small machine at a large price, then say so. In this sense, you won’t find anything better than Mini.
When giving preference to a-class, you get the volume of the salon comparable to the volume of the ML crossover (and much larger than in the E-Class universal), but you do not become the owner of a real orthodox Mercedes. One half of the brain you understand that you are driving a car with a star, and the other, and very soon, think that, besides you, no one understands this.
Voting with your heart and wallet for the BMW of the first series, you choose the smaller one that can offer you this brand a long hood and rear -wheel drive, but in the end you do not gain bonuses from the trunk and equipment. And what a pity that neither BMW, nor Mini, nor this Mercedes can be bought, voting only by common sense.
 
Probably, if you just add up the advantages of all three, not counting, of course, premium prefixes and transfer to a simple machine, then even for less money a 2-liter 150-horsepower Focus in the top version of GHIA will be released (though this is almost eight square meters parking). But in life there should always be a place for the premium.
 
Therefore, we will continue the choice.
 
Today, BMW is of the most relevant interest: neither Mini nor even more Mercedes are already an event of our district scale. This interest is not so much in that inside, but in how it all went inside. Including the cardan shaft, by the way! They wanted to get a car shorter and at the same time, so that, as always, the classic layout. To the question: why, as always? Bavarians will never give an answer that would arrange everyone. But, there are laws of physicists, the essence of which boils down to the fact that real sports cars are rear -wheel drive. BMW adheres to this physical principle, how it adheres to a sports image. The uncompromising decision for BMW on the classical layout of a compact car and its purely backwear form forced Bavarians to go to another compromise: to sacrifice what they had never particularly sacrificed the comfort and cubature of the salon.
 
Having traveled on a penny, I did not find something to complain about the drive, but if something does not suit it, it is not me, but the fifth nominal passenger of the one who will have to sit behind in the middle. Right, it is strange that he has his own headrest, but there is absolutely no place for the legs. He can only sit in a convolution, clasping his legs with a wide-high-high tunnel, in which the cardan shaft passes. Then the rest of the passengers of his feet sideways. Here is the only inconvenience from the rear -wheel drive on such a small chassis. The rest of the inconvenience is no longer dependent on the presence of a cardan.
 
Kokpit is horrible to the minimum space necessary for the driver to hold behind the wheel, switch the gears and open the side glasses. So he is better concentrated on the process and tries to get the maximum of the very pleasure at the wheel. How to drink it is clear that a person will be left without water on the road: there is simply nowhere to put it here, so as not to spill in the cabin there is not a single cup holder. The only banana niche next to the handbrake and that is only for tightly closed bottles. What, with their teeth, open and drink at a time, since the hands are busy with the steering wheel? Questions arise and to the location of the handbrake too much is pushed back. The impact on the already not high visibility is applied by anti -loner visors that overlap the panorama half. I remind you that this paragraph is about a BMW car. Never before my memory BMW have made so many local mistakes! Yes, their Idrive was at first the bishop, but it was a manifesto, and that?
 
Nevertheless, in this car there is something that is not in such popular and no less advanced machines as Golf V or Focus II.
 
This is a gloss. I do not mean riding properties, I am talking about the manner of behaving in the parking lot. Look at the one and see for yourself.
 
Along with Mini BMW-1, a real metrosexual. He picking up dandruff and dirt under his nails, to the color of a tie and trampled soles. Mercedes is not like that. And not because they will not be allowed in the subway, but because in his appearance there is no sex at all, he looks like a van. On a futuristic, but van. And let this model promise Christina Aguilera, and not Irina Allegrova at least thanks for that, but you won’t say about Ashka: wow, what a bitch has gone!
How is BMW going? Ah, how BMW rides! The chassis is what you buy first thing, buying a sedan, a compartment or, as in this case, the hatchback of this brand. The chassis is what bribes you first of all (I note that the design somehow reached itself at the end of the same line). The front wheels without CV joints are freely rolled, making the steering wheel completely transparent. Everything is stable, everything is quiet and everything is in the final. A kind of stitched nirvana, selected standardized buzz! And while the road is dry, you, of course, are not waiting for any catch. At high speed, the car will not let you relax, it will repeat to you: enjoy, enjoy, get, get, get it! You don't see how I squat with intense acceleration? Get it! You appreciated how I drew into a turn? Let's try again! Honey, why didn’t you unscrew the motor to the ringing of valves? Do you want me to die?
 
BMW-1 reminded me of the Russian cocker Spaniel. Russian, unlike an American decorative dog, was born for hunting in the Uman and lives it. So this machine, like its entire breed.
The car has a DSC electronic stabilization system of course stability. Apparently, BMW is given confidence when driving on a wet and slippery road. After all,
what a sin to hide is a whole generation of those who were born and grew up on the front drive, and their reactions no longer meet the reactions of this quasi -sports machine. And actually, who is not happy with the rear -wheel drive? Owners of BMW or Lada?
 
Mercedes A-class is good because there is more inside than outside. Outside, it is 40 cm shorter than BMW-1, but inside is more spacious than the BMW-5 universal. Its salon is gigabytes of volume, if you take a box of matches for one bit. Excellent visibility, high landing, absolutely flat floor and many transformation options. These features make it a multi -purpose vehicle. The ceiling does not lean on the forehead, does not press the gray upholstery, and therefore in the Mercedes there are no prerequisites for discontent to tear off the anger on the gas pedals. If Mercedes can not be called a sports car with BMW and Mini power and dynamics. Just as you can’t call a person an athlete only because he is lucky on the back shelf a couple of missiles for badminton. And all other things being equal, Mercedes cannot go faster than the other two. Those twelve passport kilometers-in-hours that the A-class is inferior to Mini and BMW are purely aerodynamic losses caused by a huge area of \u200b\u200bfrontal resistance. To pay tribute to the loss does not create much noise, this car is quiet.
 
Of the entire premium three, it is the most measured. Management does not increase the pulse, does not stitch and moisturizes his hands, back and does not at all affect hormonal processes. Those who are tired of the processes can say: buzz ... do not bother me to think. He just rides. You can’t call reactions with refined, and the pleasure here is not for gourmets. On it, I don’t even want to pass the hairpin again or rest and not to let Skoda ahead of myself. But there is nothing to strain from it: wool with a box, twitch the steering wheel, play along with gas, counter
and replete. A-class has a fullest in full: and from the fact that the reserves of water, packaged through the niches in the cabin, is enough for two days, and from the fact that the motor does not ask to throw firewood, and from the fact that the suspension works like a goalkeeper Akinfeev, little, but confident.
 
Mini. Three years ago, they spoke about her only about the BMW front -wheel drive model. Now we understand that the BMW drive, if it can be front, is only as a part of the 4x4 drive. Three years ago, relatively speaking, the audience went to the remake of the 1959 film, which, by the way, was not at our box office. But, oddly enough, during this time the retro fashion has gone ahead. Having once become witty, the new Mini has not become popular. Then we will consider this car just for gourmets, ready to pay money only for the multiplier-toy appearance and the name of the designer, which almost does not say anything to them.
 
According to the way this mini-set on the road behaves, we can draw a crazy conclusion: all decades, while BMW refrained from the advanced front, it accumulated potential in order to wipe everyone's noses at once. The chassis of the new mini is so beautiful, confidently and cool, just cars cannot drive yet. And if you need to put in this test on Drivers Car, then put it on Mini Cooper. Another thing is that there will be nothing special to put in the trunk. The rear places are two well -defiled pillows, like two deeply conspicuated baskets for grocery sets. Four places are a fiction designed for a hatchback body. In its energy, mini is a compartment for two. Then it is both fast and not cramped. And, I believe that Cooper is identified completely in vain with another orientation. Look around how many of them go on six hundred, five and even Peugeot. As I already said, Mini is metrosexual. Maybe due to the fact that aristocratic is at the genetic level. Finishing with wood and skin enhances this sensation. A strange thing: if you try and make four meters in the Khrushchev cuisine in a panel house a fashionable living room with a fireplace and a cigar room, then nothing good will work out. If in the same four square meters of the living space of the Mini Cooper, insert a polished roller veneer and leather armchairs on top of plastic, then you get a car that will suddenly decently drive the estates near the Vindzer castle.
 
Mini is the most touching and charming thing of the three, presented to choose from. Probably, the heart of a children's toy, forgotten on a shop near the house, lives in it. Eyes from pearly buttons should be paid now. Give me, I will click on the washer of the headlights ...
 
Honestly, I am not ready for constant communication with the three-time triumphal spirit of Monte Carlo rally (64, 65 and 67), as not ready for strong-willed methods of snow in the backdress. Therefore, I choose ... almost a Mercedes-Benz A-class van. I’m going to eat with lateral vision that he is too transparent to prying eyes.
 
1.mercedes-Benz
Huge useful volume. Beautiful ergonomics, Superrobor. Rides confidently. Does not turn over. Sports in it is a simulator, a bicycle, skis and a kayak that can be shoved at the same time. A flat floor and the same acceleration. Passed forward by the rest of the Mercedes
2.Mini
Vintage appearance, but are you ready for constant nostalgia? Great drive, carefree before snow falling out. Little space behind, but enough in front. You can already attack BMW. Unlike classic mini, this one will grow old before you
3.bmw
Great thoroughbred chassis. Do not forget to have fun! Internal dimensions allow you to achieve better concentration. Lack of little things and places for them. Constantly attacks with improvis and tuning samaras. The first loses, does not want to contact the second. Demand a more powerful version, and this one will go to the load to the BMW-7
 
Text Ivan Paderin photo Leonid Deduh
 

Source: Cars