There's strength in numbers, something you find as a kid when you commit some heinous violation against grownup society after which attempt to attribute your equals: "But everybody was performing it!" Within my family, that protest was constantly met with all the rejoinder, "If all the other children chose to jump-off a bridge, would you do this, also?" sent by my mom with equal parts rage and satire. Maybe I really could introduce her to Wolf-Dieter Kurz, the Mercedesbenz vice-president who launched us to the new 2016 GLEclass coupe by stating, "we're fitting ourselves with those who've formerly defined flamboyance in this section." Perhaps Mother could describe to him that only because BMW makes an X6 does not suggest Stuttgart wants one of its own.

But that is exactly what the GLE coupe is, a derivative body design of the midsize, five-passenger m class SUV, now re named "GLE-type" in Mercedes Benz's on-going nomenclature alteration. The coupe shares its inside, wheel base, operating equipment, and specific powertrain arrangements using its freight-capacity-improved sib, which has itself been refreshed for 2016. Yet building the coupe has seemingly sucked up all the budget. Despite the updating, the GLE's inside could use a bit more brightwork and stays a half-notch below that of the year old Cclass. While the coupe has different sheetmetal, it gives us flashbacks to the daimler-chrysler age as we spy in its account a super-size Dodge Caliber. White GLE coupes only look like melting snow-banks adorned with Mercedes symbols. How can it be that the "sporty" coupe gets grey, pebbled plastic body cladding, while the work-horse version has none?

Mercedes will construct the GLE coupe only at its Alabama plant. Europe gets two versions we will not see here: a GLE350d 4MATIC coupe with a 3.0-liter diesel V6, and a a twin turbo V-6-powered GLE400 4MATIC coupe. Nor will we see coupe variants of the plugin-hybrid vehicle GLE550e 4MATIC, the V6 GLE350, or the four-cylinder diesel GLE300d 4MATIC, each of which is accessible to Americans in standard type, as well as a GLE400. While it may seem sensible to offer Americans a back-drive edition of the GLE coupe--BMW provides back-drive-in the X6--Mercedes insists there is not going to be one. Both GLE coupes that go on-sale in August wear AMG badges, even though such tagging is somewhat disingenuous.

The "actual" AMG version is the mercedes amg GLE63 S 4MATIC coupe. (Mercede