• Plenty of cabin storage
• Reasonable passenger space
• PHEV battery eats boot capacity

How much space is there?

Space in the front of the Mercedes GLC is generous. There’s loads of room for two people to stretch out, and the wide centre console prevents occupants from bumping elbows. If we had a criticism, it’s that the centre console hems you in perhaps too much. One of our tester’s left knee became rather sore after two hours on the road, as the console occupied the space he would have liked for his leg.

The GLC’s rear seats aren’t as spacious as the fronts, but there’s still enough space for two adults. A third passenger might be quite cramped during their journey, however. The central seat is uncomfortably humped and they’ll have a large transmission tunnel to straddle, which restricts foot space for all in the rear.

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Boot space and storage

How much stuff you can put in the GLC depends entirely on how kind you want to be to the environment. Buy a mild hybrid model and you’ll have 620 litres of boot space to play with. However, if you opt for one of the potentially efficient plug-in hybrid powertrains, that figure drops to just 470 litres. The lost capacity is eaten up by the battery pack, which lives under the boot floor.

Cabin storage is good no matter the model. You get deep door bins, map pockets on the front seat backs and a centre console with two hidden storage bins – one to empty the contents of your pockets into and one that masks a wireless smartphone charging pad.

Safety

• Five-star safety rating from Euro NCAP
• Loads of standard safety equipment
• Good adult and child protection

Euro NCAP crash-tested the GLC in 2022 – and it awarded the car a five-star safety rating. It excels in the adult and child occupant protection categories, with 92% and 90% scores respectively. Its weakest performance was in the vulnerable road users category, where it scored just 74%. But that’s probably because it’s a similar size and shape to a World War II-era half-track truck.

Part of the reason why the Mercedes GLC achieved such a high overall Euro NCAP score was because of its generous amount of standard safety equipment. Every car comes with lane-keeping assist (still among the best in the business in our experience), a tyre pressure monitoring system, a reversing camera and an array of dual-stage airbags.

There’s even an active bonnet that can detect when the car collides with a pedestrian and push the panel off its mounts to create a crash mat for the person to land on.

Watch: Mercedes-Benz GLC Euro NCAP crash test video