Mercedes-Benz only banked on taking one enormous leap of faith with its new A-Class: that of trying to persuade the general public that the maker of arguably the best engineered car in the world could reinvent the small car while neither compromising its safety record nor diluting or lowering its untarnished image. And it almost did it. When the A-Class was launched midway through 1997, it was heralded by the motoring press as the most important small car since Issigonis's Mini. A modern engineering miracle to make a car so small so safe. A revelation, a technical tour de force. This was the way all cars would soon be. Mercedes had brought us the future today.
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