Car review: Mercedes-Benz A180 AMG Line

You need to watch your language in the new, fourth-generation Mercedes-Benz A-Class. Its voice recognition system is so sensitive that even though you are meant to trigger it with the phrase “Hey Mercedes”, any use of “Mercedes” wakes the thing up and makes it ask you what you want to do.

You can tell it to change the radio station, or set the sat-nav etc, and sometimes it works. We tried to test its scope by asking it to tell us a joke. It responded in magnificently Basil Fawltyesque manner by saying, “I am sorry. My engineers were German”. You couldn’t make it up.

Jokes apart, the new A-Class is a huge improvement on the last one, especially in the cabin, which uses far better materials and has a proper premium feel to it.

The personality of the car depends greatly on which model you drive. The “cooking” A180, which is expected to be the biggest seller, has a 1.5-litre four-cylinder diesel motor supplied by the Renault-Nissan Alliance. It generates a measly 116hp, but feels slightly livelier than this suggests, unless hills are involved, when it soon sounds strained. The overall effect is not involving.

Switch to the A200, which has only a 1.3-litre four-pot petrol engine pushing out 163hp, and it is a very different story. This is a sparkling engine which, despite its modest size, really makes you want to drive the car. Like the rest of the range, it has a twin-clutch seven-speed auto gearbox.

Probably because it is lighter at the front than the diesel, the A200 has sharper handling, turns into corners with more bite and is generally a pleasure to drive.

However, put it in Sport mode and the action becomes so frenetic that the car feels like Lee Evans after far too much coffee. Probably better avoided.

Externally, the new A-Class hasn’t greatly changed. Front and rear lamps have been tweaked, it is slightly bigger than before and 20kg lighter but it is still instantly recognisable as an A-Class.

The cabin quality is now a million miles from the squeaky plastics and dodgy build quality of the original A-Class of 1997, although the stalks for indicators and gear selection let the side down.

All the test cars at launch were in top spec AMG Line trim, but even within that there is a choice of two seven-inch or two 10-inch screens for the electronic dashboard. The smaller screens left a large gap between them, which made the dash look unfinished. The larger units look and work far better.

One odd feature with the larger screen is that when the sat-nav is about to give you an instruction, a TV image of the road ahead, complete with a blue arrow to tell you which way to turn, pops up for a few seconds. I founds this useful but a bit distracting, although I suppose you would get used to it.

Sadly, there wasn’t time to sample the more powerful 2-litre version, badged A250, which has a four-cylinder turbocharged engine developing 224hp and 350Nm of torque. Apparently this version reaches 62mph in 6.2 seconds and has a top speed of 155mph.

Other engines options will follow, including a 300hp A35 and 400hp A45 next year.

Dodgy voice recognition and slightly dead steering apart, make no mistake, this is a very good car and a huge improvement over its predecessor. Once the initial gremlins of the early cars are ironed out, it should win Mercedes a lot of new and younger fans.

Details: Mercedes-Benz A180 AMG Line

Top speed: 126mph

Combined mpg: 68.9

0-62mph: 10.5 secs

CO2: 111g/km

Price: £28,280