I SUPPOSE I should hail the rise of the crossover, these car-based pseudo-S.U.V.’s that give their owners a dash of off-road bravado without the profligacy — oil, ore and parking-lot real estate — of a true truck. But while crossovers are immensely popular and immensely useful, they’re also immensely boring. More on This Car 2010 Mercedes Benz GLK

So you’ve built a five-passenger tall wagon with a V-6 engine, an automatic transmission and all-wheel drive? Join the club. Crossovers are to cars what J. Crew sweaters are to fashion —useful and dapper enough, but not the most exciting thing you’ll ever buy.

Mercedes-Benz is obviously aware that the biggest challenge facing a new crossover is the sheer volume of competition. How do you stand out from the crowd?

The answer, evidently, is through bombastic styling. The new GLK, the smallest Benz wagon, eschews the generic oblong crossover shape in favor of upright, angular bodywork. Most crossovers seem to have been shaped by the wind. The GLK, meant to evoke the boxy G-Class S.U.V., looks to me as if it were left in the path of a retreating glacier.

While the 2010 GLK appears blunt, its coefficient of drag — the measure of a car’s aerodynamic slipperiness — is only 0.35, the same as a Porsche Cayenne (...more)