The Mercedes-Benz M-Class was a trailblazer of the large SUV category when it was launched in 1997, and it inspired everyone from Audi (Q7) to Volvo (XC90) to introduce luxury dirt-duellers of their own.

Having sold more than 2-million units worldwide thus far, the all-terrain Benz has arrived in SA in its latest fourth-generation iteration, albeit now wearing the GLE badge that was introduced in 2016 as part of Mercedes’ new naming convention. If you’re a little rusty on how that works, the GLE sits above the compact GLA and the midsized GLC in Merc’s SUV line-up, and below the supersized GLS, while the boxy Gelandewagen fills its own niche as the adventurous iconoclast of the family...