Mercedes-Benz B 200 CDI Sport

There are clear MPV conventions inside the cabin. Mercedes has dispensed with the expensive old B-class’ ‘sandwich platform’, choosing instead a more ordinary underbody arrangement for the new car that has liberated low-level cabin space. So you sit fairly snug in the B-class, almost as low as you would in a normal five-door, but in a fairly upright, bent-legged, MPV-like driving position. There’s plenty of surplus headroom.

Rear passengers enjoy a little more space and comfort than they would in a normal five-door hatchback, with particularly impressive footroom available under the front seats. Provision for a fifth occupant is poor, though. There’s no seven-seat option, and even on flagship versions Mercedes will charge you extra for sliding second-row seats, a ski hatch and a folding front passenger seatback, all parts of its £515 Easy-Vario-Plus option.

So you might quibble over the generosity of this car’s standard specification (cruise control’s an extra, too). And yet the B-class’ cabin creates an impression of tangible richness, quality and value-for-money anyway, comprised of tactile and substantial plastics, chunky and expensive-feeling new switchgear, smooth leathers on the primary controls, and metallic trim flourishes like the air vents and interior doorhandles, which are attractive on the eye and cool to the touch.

At last, one of Daimler’s transverse-engined breed has the kind of interior to make it at least feel like a fully-paid-up, invulnerable Mercedes-Benz. This B-class may be no more impervious to use and the passage of time than the last, but it certainly strikes a much clearer and more convincing impression of quality from the get-go.

Cosseting refinement would probably be next on your wishlist for the perfect baby Benz. If it is, don’t buy a B-class Sport. While other versions may be better in this department, our test car was neither quiet-running nor particularly smooth-riding. Its low-profile runflat tyres crashed quite noisily over broken surfaces, and although its ‘amplitude-selective’ dampers brought better compliance over longer-wave crests and through compressions, the B 200 CDi Sport was disappointingly short on basic rolling comfort for any premium-brand family five-door – modern or otherwise.

Mechanical refinement is better, but still not brilliant. Although well-behaved in the broadest sense, Mercedes’ 1.8-litre turbodiesel engine is a little coarse at low speeds, and under wide throttle openings. Throttle response is good and in-gear performance plentiful, but in our test car it came accompanied by a slightly flatulent whooshing from the far side of the front bulkhead; the kind you’d expect of an aged W124 saloon with a hole in its manifold.

Is the B-class ‘Sport’ fun to drive? Not much. Which isn’t for the want of grip or lateral body control, both of which are as strong as you could wish for. The car’s dynamic shortcomings are buried slightly deeper. Press on down a particularly testing country road and you’ll find that the car’s vertical damping deteriorates, losing control of the movements of its tall body on the rebound stroke. Both a VW Golf and a Ford Focus would be more tied-down.

The bigger problem, however, is that the B-class Sport just isn’t very easy to gel with. The variable-ratio power steering quickens suddenly off-centre after a large ‘stability zone’ at the straight-ahead, which makes carving a smooth, accurate cornering line a bit of a guessing game. There’s also insufficient feedback though the steering wheel rim, and a little too much unpredictability about the car’s damping generally, for a keen driver to find much to really please.