Singapore

MAKING a stylish, desirable car is a difficult sort of alchemy, requiring a delicate balance of brand value, automotive design, practicality, and a hundred other things. But if anyone can claim to have something approaching a reliable formula for it, it's Mercedes-Benz, and that shows clearly in the A 200.

One obvious trick in the desirability playbook is giving the car design cues from bigger, more expensive Mercedes models that have more visual oomph.