2014 Mercedes Benz GLA Crossover makes a web appearance in India

The Mercedes Benz GLA crossover is just around the corner and the German luxury car giant has begun promoting its latest big volumes puller on its official Indian website. The GLA crossover, based on the MFA platform that underpins affordable luxury cars from Mercedes Benz, will be a competitor to the likes of the Audi Q3 and the BMW X1 entry-level, luxury crossovers. While the first few lots of the GLA crossover are expected to arrive into India as completely built units (CBU), Mercedes Benz will eventually assemble the crossover in India at its Chakan assembly unit from completely knocked down (CKD) kits.

Both turbo petrol and turbo diesel variants of the GLA crossover, dubbed the GLA 200 Sport and the GLA 200 CDI, are expected to be sold in India. The crossover could also get a souped up, high performance AMG variant in the months to come given the fact that the GLA 45 AMG was imported into India a while ago for homologation. The petrol powered GLA crossover is likely to use a 1.6 liter-4 cylinder turbo charged motor with 156 Bhp-250 Nm outputs while the diesel powered version will be powered by a 2.2 liter-4 cylinder turbocharged motor with likely outputs of 167 Bhp-350 Nm.

Both the petrol and diesel powered GLA crossovers will use 7 speed, dual clutch automatic transmissions, and a front wheel drive layout as standard. On higher variants of the GLA crossover, Mercedes Benz may consider offering an all wheel drive system given the model’s positioning and the flexibility of the MFA platform, which is capable of accommodating an all wheel drive architecture. The GLA crossover will be followed by another MFA platform based car, the CLA sedan, which is expected to arrive by the fag-end of this year as a competitor to the recently launched Audi A3 sedan.

With a big push into the affordable luxury car segments, Mercedes Benz is aiming to retake the sales lead in India, which it has lost to BMW and Audi over the years. Time to bring out the popcorn as Audi and Mercedes Benz slug it out for sales supremacy in India, one of the bigger, emerging luxury car markets of the world.