Remember the Mercedes-Benz GLA with a taxi sign on its roof that the peeps from TouriClips filmed a couple of weeks ago driving hard on the Nordschleife? Well, back then, no one really knew what was the deal with that car.
The speculation we had was that it's obviously an upcoming taxi variant of the newly-launched Mercedes-Benz GLA, sporting front-wheel drive and the Renault-sourced 1.5-liter diesel engine.
Today we learned more info about that strange prototype, and it's a bit different that what we originally thought.
Yes, that is a special taxi version of the GLA but its engine of choice is actually the 1.6-liter four-cylinder from the Mercedes-Benz B 200 Natural Gas Drive Taxi that was launched the other day at the 2013 Frankfurt Motor Show.
Part of the M270 engine family, the turbocharged four-pot has 1595 cc and delivers 156 hp and 270 Nm (199 lb ft) of torque. Its most impressive feature comes obviously from the much lower CO2 emissions when running on natural gas and the fact that natural gas provides costs which are around 50% lower than gasoline. The model will be introduced later this year, so you might see it in German taxi fleets as soon as early 2014.
Alex handled his first real steering wheel at the age of five (on a field) and started practicing "Scandinavian Flicks" at 14 (on non-public gravel roads). Following his time at the University of Journalism, he landed his first real job at the local franchise of Top Gear magazine a few years before Mircea (Panait). Not long after, Alex entered the New Media realm with the autoevolution.com project. Full profile
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