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They should have taken the opportunity to make it rear-wheel drive (or at least all-wheel drive). Mercedes generally cares about driving fun, given how so much

• zalew 14y ago
  FWD is an economical solution and targetted at the less demanding crowd. BMW, Merc, Lexus and the higher end cars are mostly RWD (or AWD with more power on the rear) because it makes easier to achieve a proper distribution of weight and decent handling properties, and obviously the fun factor. Also RWD/AWD is kind of forced upon when you need to transfer a lot of power to the ground - in an FWD layout it turns out to be too complicated and much less effective. That said, as a BMW and thus RWD fan, I must say it doesn't make much sense to produce a RWD in the Mercedes A/B-klasse line, because owners wouldn't gain much or even notice. There was a curious case after the success of BMW 1-series, it turned out in a BMW's poll study that the vast majority of the customers didn't even know it's RWD (which is sad and dangerous) not to mention recognizing the advantages of this layout. The current BMW 1-series platform already supports an FWD layout (to share with Mini) and very probably the next line of 1-series will be FWD, only leaving the coupe (upgraded to 2-series) as RWD. It raises concerns about brand perception, but that's another story. Wrapping it up - RWD rocks, but it's not worth it when you are targeting a less demanding customer group.