WITH this new vehicle concept, Mercedes-Benz is once again asserting its role as the trendsetter among car brands and preparing the way for a young market segment with a promising future. The Sports Tourer meets the wishes of today's motorists for a car with generous space, exemplary comfort, excellent practicality, an exciting design and a high level of driving pleasure.

The new B-Class takes the advantages of different vehicle concepts and combines them into an interesting and distinctive profile of its own: as a Compact Sports Tourer, the B-Class is a touring, family and recreational vehicle with incomparable added experience value in terms of design and dynamism.

One of the major advantages of the Compact Sports Tourer is the sandwich concept developed by Mercedes-Benz. Thanks to the space-saving arrangement of the engine and transmission partly in front of and partly beneath the passenger cell, the new B-Class offers the interior spaciousness of larger saloons and estate cars despite its compact external dimensions. The body has a length of 4270mm, corresponding to the compact car class. Inside, however, the new Mercedes model offers more than other cars of comparable size in this segment in all comfort-related respects, e.g. shoulder-room, legroom and headroom.

Occupants in the rear benefit from the long wheelbase (2778mm); this allows a distance between seats and generous kneeroom which almost matches that in the S-Class. High-torque CDI diesel engines and up-to-date petrol units meet the need of the Sports Tourer concept for effortless performance and a high level of driving pleasure. There is a choice of six four-cylinder engines with outputs ranging from 95hp to 193hp.

The top-of-the-line B 200 TURBO is equipped with a new two-litre, four-cylinder engine which delivers a maximum torque of 280 Nm from as little as 1800rpm thanks to turbocharging and intercooling, and maintains this value over a wide engine speed range up to 4850rpm. This means that the most powerful of the Compact Sports Tourers accelerates from standstill to 62.5mph in just 7.6 seconds, takes the fifth-gear sprint from 50 to 70mph in 7.3 seconds and achieves a maximum speed of 140mph.