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Part SUV, part car: Mercedes-Benz shows sleek GLC Coupe

NEW YORK-- It's a coupe. It's a SUV. It's somewhere in the middle.

NEW YORK-- It's a coupe. It's a SUV. It's somewhere in the middle.

The new Mercedes-Benz model unveiled here Tuesday night has a foot in both camps. The brand showed off the new GLC Coupe at a studio event in a swanky section of New York, a night ahead of the media preview of the city's big auto show.

Basically, the GLC Coupe is the luxury brand's midsize SUV with a sloped back to be more shapely. The vehicle will compete against BMW's X4 and X6, which has scored with the same raked look. Mercedes views the GLC Coupe's shape as leading edge when it comes to styling.

"It is both hot and cool," said Gorden Wagener, head of design at Daimler, the parent of Mercedes-Benz. "With its design idiom of sensual purity, it perfectly embodies our styling philosophy while at the same time representing contemporary luxury.

Mercedes also says the GLC Coupe hews closely to the concept version of it that it showed in Shanghai in the spring. That's significant because automakers are notorious for showing eye-catching concept vehicles at auto shows, then rejecting the coolest elements the design as too expensive or too impractical when it comes to the production version.

The Coupe is 3.2 inches longer and 1.6 inches wider than the GLC SUV, which is also being shown at the auto show. Even though it has much of the space the higher seating position of a SUV, BMW says from the side it looks like a sleek sports coupe. The higher seating is afforded partly by its large wheels, up to 21 inches.

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