You must have read our previous issue, the Anniversary edition! By the time the final page was signed off on the magazine issue, it was already tomorrow. The kind of tomorrow that’s too early for even the stray dogs to care. The office was quiet, a rare phenomenon considering the chaos that had unfolded over the past week. Somewhere, a printer still hummed like it hadn’t got the memo. But the real hum was coming from my head, the one that only sets in when your bloodstream is more Adobe InDesign than haemoglobin.
This was supposed to be the part where I crashed on the studio couch like I always do. You see, I live in Pune. Which makes me a bit of an idiot because our HQ is in Mumbai, and that’s a good 120-odd kilometres away, not far enough to be impressive, not close enough to be convenient. So, during magazine closings, I stay back. The couch knows me. The security guard knows me. Even the espresso machine in the pantry, which might be older than the Internet, knows me.
But tonight was different. The couch looked tired. I looked worse. And the coffee machine? That thing gave up halfway through grinding beans and groaned like it had just read our social media calendar for next month. And I’m still here, blinking at the final PDF on the screen. And for the first time in days, I can hear my own thoughts. Unfortunately, all they’re saying is: you need coffee. Not the sachet sort, not anything that rhymes with “mock-a-latte” from a vending machine. I mean real coffee. The kind that needs time, craft, and a bit of reverence. A ritual, not a beverage. So I did what any under-caffeinated, sleep-deprived motoring journalist would do. I went for a drive.
So here’s the mission. I need coffee. There is not no coffee, but the one I trust to redeem this bleary night sits at the lobby café of the St. Regis in Lower Parel. Somewhere between 3 am and 4 am in the morning, when Mumbai is at its most honest, I’ll drive there because more than caffeine, it’s about the love of the drive. The quiet, deliberate, unhurried kind. The kind that reminds you why you took this job in the first place. This brings me to the car.
The Mercedes-Benz GLC 300 sits quietly in the BBC TopGear India HQ parking bay amongst other cars that have come for testing this week, gleaming like it has nothing to prove. It doesn’t draw attention to itself. No flash. No shouty spoilers. No aggressive gurney flaps or angry diffusers. It just stands there, composed and confident, like a proper luxury family SUV. And tonight, it feels like precisely the right machine for the job.
So I pressed the start button. The cabin lights breathe life, and the soft ambient lighting tones greet me like a prelude to a jazz record. The engine wakes up with a polite murmur. And just like that, at a time when even the moon looked like it wanted to clock out, I rolled out into the Mumbai night a man, a Mercedes, and a mission to caffeinate.
Now, let’s get something out of the way. The GLC isn’t a car you lust after as a teenager. It won’t make you dream of Alpine roads or Nürburgring lap times. It doesn’t shout or snarl or even raise its voice. It whispers. And in the silence of the night, that’s exactly what you want.
The new one’s grown up a bit. It’s longer and wider, and it wears its new clothes like someone who’s been watching far too much of David Beckham (off the field). There’s chrome where you expect there to be chrome, a grille that means business, and headlamps that are now connected to the grille, while the bumper features flared nostrils, besides a healthy dose of chrome at the bottom. And it feels expensive even before you touch anything, and slightly arrogant. The kind of arrogance you earn when you’ve sold over 2.6 million of these globally.
You open the door and you’re greeted by soft lighting, soft leather and sophistication. The interior, if you’ve been inside the new C-Class, is basically the same, which is to say it’s like being inside a miniature S-Class, only without the guilt of having peaked too soon in life. There’s a massive touchscreen in the middle that does everything except boil the beans for you, and it’s all very shiny and futuristic and just tactile enough to make you forgive the lack of proper buttons. But let me get back to the driving bit!
There’s something magical about driving through Mumbai at midnight. The city that usually feels like it’s in a constant state of shouting finally pauses. Mumbai, at this hour, sheds its chaos. The honking stops. The traffic lights still do their job, bless them, turning from red to green with no audience. Roads that are usually choked with rickshaws and riders suddenly feel wide, as if they’ve taken a deep breath and stretched. And the GLC just glides through it all.
At low speeds, it’s as quiet as a library. The suspension, which might feel like it has a firm edge when you’re pushing it, suddenly makes more sense even in the calm. It’s tuned for pace. Not speed pace. Confident, unbothered momentum that makes you feel in control of something well-bred. I could tell you that it does 0–100 kmph in 6.2 seconds. That it’s got a 2.0-litre turbo petrol engine with mild-hybrid trickery, 258 horsepower, and 400Nm of torque enough to outrun your average Zomato delivery guy, but not enough to lose your license in one red-light dash. But none of that mattered tonight because tonight was about the feel.
I slipped it into Comfort mode. There are several, but honestly, Comfort is all you need when you’re floating through an empty city. The engine hums along, the 9-speed gearbox does its thing without complaint, and the steering offers just enough feedback to make you feel like you're involved without being burdened by the responsibility of driving. It’s like being asked to conduct an orchestra with a single raised eyebrow.
Speaking of orchestra, there’s the Burmester sound system. Fifteen speakers, tuned so well that you could hear Norah Jones breathe. At one point, I played a bit of Miles Davis just to see if the car would start clicking its own fingers. It didn’t. But I’m pretty sure it wanted to.
The streets turned darker. Industrial estates. Broken footpaths. The odd tapri still open, serving men in dust-covered shirts the reward of hot chai and half-sleep. The GLC didn’t flinch. It simply floated. The all-wheel drive made short work of the odd patch of gravel. The LED headlights turned night into theatre. It was serene. It was surreal. It was driving, distilled.
Now, I should tell you I have a bit of a thing for coffee. I’m that person. I don’t drink it out of a paper cup. I don’t accept sachets. Nothing instant. I know the difference between Arabica and Robusta, and I know the difference between torque and power. I once spent an entire internship blending different beans and arguing with people about roast profiles. And the only thing that matches the complexity of a good pour-over is a well-engineered car. This brings us to the GLC again.
This SUV is very German, a very grown-up SUV, and in many ways, it is like a good cup of coffee. Not flashy. Not in-your-face. But smooth, balanced, and deeply satisfying. You don’t crave it like you crave a supercar. But once you’ve had it, you wonder why you wasted so much time on everything else.
St. Regis appeared like a lighthouse on the horizon. I rolled in slowly, the GLC’s ambient lighting now glowing a soft blue. The valet gave me that look, the one that says, “Nice car, sir”, but without needing to say anything at all. I walked in. I ordered my usual: Ethiopian beans, medium roast, AeroPress. No sugar. No milk. The barista nodded like a sommelier.
And then I sat by the window, sipping, watching the GLC parked under the dim halo overlooking the Mumbai skyline. A quiet machine. Not shouting for attention. Not needing validation. Just like a good coffee. Just like a good drive.
It’s funny, really. We spend so much of our lives rushing and running late and cursing traffic, and chasing deadlines. But sometimes, when the world finally shuts up, you get to remember what made you fall in love in the first place.
Not with cars. Not with coffee. But with the drive itself.
And in that moment, somewhere between pages and paragraphs, gears and grind, caffeine and chassis, the GLC 300 made sense. Not as a car. Not as an SUV. But as a reminder, the best journeys don’t always need a destination.
Sometimes, they just need a driver. And a bloody good cup of coffee.
