Angling to outmaneuver longtime nemesis BMW, Mercedes is preparing to roll out three diesel SUVs in the coming year and AutoblogGreen was lucky enough to score a drive at the media event in Vermont.

The article goes into great detail about each of the vehicles so I won’t rehash them here, but the most impressive part of the story is the mileage that these oversize kid carriers return. The R320 got 23 mpg, the GL320 turned in 24 mpg, and the mid-size ML320 surprised with 27 mpg on a short 20 mile test drive. On the 70 mile trip to the airport, the ML320 came in at 29.5 MPG! For the sake of comparison, a four cylinder Toyota Camry gets just 21 mpg in city driving and 31 on the highway.

Diesel prices are soaring along with unleaded, but with improved mileage, diesel clearly provides a better value.

Story from AutoblogGreen

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 25th, 2008 at 11:17 pm and is filed under Autos, General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.