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Michael Frank

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Michael Frank got his driver's license on the morning of his 16th birthday and a year later, bought his first car, a 1974 Ford Capri with a "sleeper"... More

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5,603 views Jun 7, 2010

2009 Mercedes-Benz ML320 BlueTEC Preview

This isn’t a perfect crossover.

For instance, to fold the rear seats flat you have to first lift the seat bottoms forward, remove headrests from seatbacks and then fold said seatbacks down. Reversing this process requires a good bit of muscle. Part of the Mercedes lore we mentioned at the outset is that these are stoutly built vehicles -- you can literally feel that when you try to rearrange the furniture.

But a five-foot-nothing woman in heels who finds herself at Home Depot’s garden center on the way home from work might need help from the kid who works there to lower these seatbacks and bring home a flat of flowers. The $22k Nissan Rogue I’m presently testing has rear seats that fold dead flat in one go and require scant effort to reset to upright. Again, it’s not the same ownership experience, but said female professional might well feel that easily rearranging seats is a key to happiness.

And down the road, even Mercedes may find it’s necessary to trim fat (and heft) out of seatbacks. And why not? If Stuttgart can see clear to making great cupholders for American buyers (and a pretty great crossover while we’re at it), the sky is clearly the limit.