Mercedes Is Lighting Up Whole Grilles Now

Ah, the eternal war for ‘who can make the audacious car grilles between the German manufacturers?’ rages on. BMW had seemingly gained ground on that front, efforts like the illuminated iX grille introduced at the start of the year, and whatever it was thinking with the 7 Series, but Mercedes may have just dropped a nuke in the battle.

The obscenely bright thing you see here isn’t the face of some concept car with no intent of production. Rather, it’s a first look at the inbound electric Mercedes GLC.

Given that an EV doesn’t really need a large front grille, it’s given Mercedes quite the template to work with – and it’s opted to cram a shedload of LEDs into that space, 942 to be precise. Oh, and in case those weren’t enough, the Mercedes three-pointed star is also illuminated.

So far, Mercedes has only released a static image of the grille but says it can be animated too, so we’ll have to await some clips to see exactly which patterns its lighting engineers have come up with. Good news if you were keen on a new GLC but hate the grille – it will be an option.

Gorden Wagener, Mercedes’s chief design officer, had this to say: “Our new iconic grille is not just a new front for the GLC, it redefines the face of our brand. It is the perfect fusion of lasting design codes reinterpreted for the future, making our cars instantly recognisable.”

Doesn’t take much reading into that to guess this new grille will be gradually introduced across Mercedes’ EVs in the coming years, with the GLC just being the start.

We’ll see the new Mercedes GLC in full at the Munich Motor Show on 7 September. Car Throttle will be there, so we’ll report back how it looks in person – assuming our retinas haven’t been cooked by 942 LEDs.