CLASS OF THE TITANS

In a portfolio of established heavyweights, the new A-Class tries to make room for itself. How does it fare?

-  Pablo Chaterji

There was an Amazon Echo Dot lying on the cabinet in my hotel room in Goa, when I checked in for the A-Class seda… sorry, limousine drive. It was plugged in — as if a previous occupant had done so — which made both me and the attendant who had brought me to my room wonder if I was in the right one. Puzzled, he left and promised to find out what was going on. I stood around and wondered whether to immediately leave the room (because COVID) or to investigate the Dot (because curiosity); the latter urge won.

It turned out that I was indeed in my assigned room, because next to the Dot was a card with a number of questions I could ask Alexa about the new A-Class, questions such as where my car was, what its fuel situation was, where I could find coffee shops (Alexa rather unhelpfully suggested several in Mumbai) and sundry others. I was suitably amused, and also struck by the fact that you can never seem to escape some kind of connected technology these days. You couldn’t call me a vocal proponent of it — I prefer to get in a car and just drive — but I do realise that buyers of today, especially younger ones, consider it an essential feature, surgically attached as they are to their smartphones.