Suv surprise

ML could very well stand for "much-MaLigned" because the first impressions of the original mid-sized SUV from Mercedes-Benz have lingered for some despite extensive improvements to subsequent generations.

This is because when the first M-Class was introduced in the late 1990s, it had a truck-like body-on-frame construction with the ride comfort of, well, a truck. Anyone in the back seat of that first-generation M-Class going fast would probably have bounced around like a lottery ball in a Toto draw.

Things got better when the next M-Class adopted a unibody design, and today, the latest version of this SUV with the three-pointed star is a very different car.