18 Apr 07
As the family wave a particularly fond farewell to the R-Class today, it occurs to me that never have I felt the disparity between driving a car briefly for a road test and actually living with one for a protracted period more acutely than in this context.
All too often, one road tests a car and rather enjoys it, only to discover that it isn't quite all it's cracked up to be when it becomes a member of the family. In the case of the Mercedes, however, precisely the opposite turns out to be the case.
Displaying virtues that have only gradually revealed themselves to us over time, the R-Class has got under our collective skin in the past six months to such an extent that my wife has taken to standing in the kitchen, ominously close to the drawer housing the rolling pin, and refusing to take any interest in our next long-term test vehicle while grumpily demanding 'I want my Mercedes back'. She's even rather pointedly added a certain Janis Joplin song to her iPod playlist, with which I am assaulted at disturbingly frequent intervals...
What really won me over was the ready flexibility of the R-Class's interior. Unsure if we'd ever even use six seats at the outset, the Mercedes quickly became school-run bus for the village, with a range of child seats, including rather smart toddler and nipper versions from Mercedes themselves hurtling about the interior in response to shrilly squeaked location preferences.
