Mercedes-Benz’ New Golf Cart

All you golfers out there, feast your eyes on the new, super-luxe Mercedes-Benz Style Edition Garia Golf Car.

As the overly-long name suggests, this electric two-seater is a collaboration between Mercedes-Benz Style, the automaker’s lifestyle design division, and Danish golf car maker, Garia.

And what a cool piece of tech it is. Lightweight aluminum chassis, carbon fiber roof, double-wishbone suspension, disc brakes, LED headlights and classy 14-inch alloy rims that could have come off a sporty Mercedes C-Class.

Power comes from a 4-hp electric motor that can gives burst of 15-hp for those steep uphill trails, though top speed is limited to 19mph. Heck, we don’t want to go too crazy. And the lithium-ion battery is designed to give a range of 50 miles and re-charge in about six hours.

But the fun stuff appears when you slide into that leather-covered bench seat. On the dash there’s a high-rez 10.1-inch split-screen touchscreen. The upper half displays information such as speed and remaining range and whether you’ve selected ‘eco’ and ‘sport’ modes –  seriously – for the electric motor.

The lower half of the screen shows all the golf info, such as the course layout with the cart’s position overlaid, a digital scorecard, and a weather app to show when the next lightning burst is due.

Want tunes while you tear around the tees? There’s a four-speaker surround-sound system controlled by the touchscreen, with Bluetooth connectivity, so you can stream your Pandora faves from your iPhone.

They also thought long and hard about handling clubs, so the dual bag holders are angled at 45 degrees. There’s also a lockable storage box, and when you feel the urge to pop a cold one, lift the seat and beneath is a five-gallon mini-fridge.

What has continued to amaze me is that while the sport of golf has become much more stylish and sophisticated over the years, the humble electric golf cart still looks like it evolved from Fred Flintstone’s ‘footmobile’.

Design evolution has usually been limited to dressing up your golf cart to look like some pimped-up Hummer or chrome-laden Cadillac Escalade. Mercedes-Benz Style has it right when it says: “While golf has developed into a premium sport with a modern face, golf carts have remained almost unchanged for decades.”

So this Style Edition Garia is full of cool design features, like the golf-ball-pattern front grille and carbon-fiber rear spoiler and diffuser. Of course, the more cynical among you might also point to its uncanny resemblance to a Toys R Us Little Tykes Cozy Coupe.

For the moment, Mercedes-Benz Style is calling its sporty new two-seater a ‘concept’ but we’ve heard production at Garia is all ready to tee-off.

It certainly looks like Mercedes has popped a hole-in-one with this little buggy.

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