Mercedes, it’s time to break out the bubbly. Today, MotorTrend magazine announced the winner of their annual contest as the Mercedes-Benz 2013 GL. It might not seem this way at first, but the SUV of the year award is a pretty big deal. For people less interested in LeMans races and more concerned with Lamaze courses, the SUV is probably the vehicle of choice. And if there’s anything that can be said of the automotive landscape as it stands today, is that there is a lot of choice when it comes to SUVs and crossovers. Too much, in fact. The competitiveness of this field why Mercedes’ win is noteworthy. It’s one thing to be faster than everyone else. It’s a completely different thing to build the best people mover.
Though they explicitly state the competition is not a comparison, we can’t help but do just that. No one is going to be viewing these cars in a vacuum. That said, no body-on-frame SUV’s made the cut into the final testing. That probably says more about the state of the SUV industry than the taste of MotorTrend’s editors.
