P retenders beware, the king has arrived! Okay, the supremacy is yet to be proven but the lineage is all there with the Mercedes-Benz ML320, says Yogendra Pratap after driving this sports utility vehicle on all sorts of tarmac and dirt, but refraining to make his own road, something the M-class will not be required to do here in India. As the road test uncovers, the M-class is just the vehicle to beat the living daylights out of most cars and lay claim to the spot of the most desired vehicle on Indian roads.

When DaimlerChrysler India was taking orders for the CBUs it is planning to sell in India, journos were going gaga over the CLKs and SLKs while OVERDRIVE stood firmly behind the M-class. Adil had at that time predicted that it would be the M-class that would be drawing the buyers. So when the company announced that the M-class had received nearly as many bookings as all the other models put together, we felt vindicated. The Indian penchant for SUVs is quite well known and an SUV with the three pointed star adds class to your image like no other marque can in India. But as we roadtested the ML320, we found that the crossover has far more claims to the SUV throne than its lineage.