ONE QUESTION HAS

challenged carmakers through the past 30 or so years: how to build a stylish vehicle with room for six people and their stuff.

The industry's response has moved from big station wagons to minivans to large luxury SUVs. But now the American car market is entering the post-SUV era. High gas prices and dissatisfaction with the handling and ride of SUVs built on pickup truck chassis have customers and carmakers alike searching for a 21st-century way to define a classy family vehicle. Enter the Mercedes R-class. One look and it's obvious the R-class isn't like any Mercedes you've ever seen. It's long and wide, like a big SUV. But it rides relatively low to the ground, like one of those big 1970s station wagons. The rear door provides a huge opening, the better to gain access to a third row of seats, like a minivan. But the big door doesn't slide.

Mercedes calls the R-class a "sports tourer." I call it a status wagon. It combines the technological and comfort features of a luxury sedan with the people- and cargo-hauling capacity of a minivan and the all-wheel-drive capability of an SUV.

Mercedes designed the R-class to appeal to "late forming, affluent families," couples who have reached a point in their lives when they have the money to aspire to a Mercedes costing $50,000 to $70,000 but still have kids in the house.

The R-class comes out of the same factory in Alabama that builds Mercedes's new M-class SUV. But the R-class doesn't look, or handle, like an SUV. From the decidedly un-Mercedes big cupholders in the front console to the three rows of bucket seats, to the optional rear-seat video system, the R-class does a lot of things that a minivan does.

On the highway, the R-class drives like a big Mercedes sedan. A button on the center console allows you to switch between "sport" and "comfort" modes. There's a real difference. I found that riding in sport mode produced a harsh ride on rough pavement. This simply isn't a sporty vehicle. It's a ground-hugging luxury liner with all-the-time four-wheel drive.

Maneuvering the R-class into parking spaces offers a test of how this vehicle is different from an SUV, and different from an ordinary car. The R-class, with a 40.7-foot turning circle, slid much more easily into shopping center parking slots than did large SUVs I have driven. But the vehicle is so long that getting a clear view out the back can be a challenge. The R500 I tested had a rear-facing sensor to alert me when I was about to crunch a garbage can while trying to parallel park in front of my house.

Mercedes marketers expect most buyers will go with a "premium package" of options priced at $5,400 for the R350 and $4,400 for the R500 that includes the panoramic roof, navigation, premium sound and power liftgate. That puts the target price for the R350 at about $54,150. The R500 will likely be targeted at just over $60,000.

The R-class may not make more sense from a strict dollars-and-cents point of view than a well-designed minivan. If a minivan is out of the question for reasons of self-esteem, and more-conventional crossover SUVs aren't appealing, luxury wagons could be alternatives. The R-class is an intriguing response to the world's weariness with gaudy SUVs and mundane minivans, but it feels like a Version 1.0. It would be more impressive if it were more efficient in terms of interior space and fuel economy and offered more standard amenities like a power liftgate.