I WAS counting coppers in the Camshaft Arms when a regular announced he had traded in his SL500 for another car. Another regular immediately said he wished he'd known. He'd have been interested in buying the SL. As no one else could have afforded the car the conversation moved on. "What have you got now, then, Derek?"
Well, Derek had no idea except that it was also a Mercedes, and it had four doors. More questions and some hazy answers followed until the car was identified as the then brand new CLS, the four door saloon which the makers call a coupe.
Such inno
cent ignorance about one's car is not unusual. The other night, nearing the end of a successful all-terrain bike ride (successful: had neither fallen nor punctured) I called for a celebratory beer at another pub and chatted to a fellow cyclist about bikes, the pavement protecting coating he had developed, and then cars. His wife had got a BMW convertible and he had got a Mercedes coupe. Very nice, but the thing was he had no idea what the model names were.
Car-makers spend stacks of hours deciding on names but with many people they are not important. Others drool over cars. They buy car magazines or sift the internet, mostly just to look. Like Sam, a nephew, with an old 3-Series. Sam's current rave car is the Audi S7. "Have you driven one?" he asked.
Bluntly, no. In fact until I squiggled it on the internet I assumed Sam must be referring to a hotter version of the Q7. I now know that S7 is a 600 horse power mutation of next year's Audi A7, which in turn is a four-door coupe to rival the CLS reviewed here.
Mercedes-Benz has just given the CLS an early nip and tuck to ready it for its first real rival. The changes are not remarkable. All models have a grille with two horizontal bars. Previously, all had four bars, bar the AMG model which had three bars. That's enough about bars for now.
The CLS also gets door mirrors with a 32% gain in reflective area, and arrow-shaped LED indicators in the casing. LEDs also appear in the rear lights but, so far, not at the front. While at the back, check the tailpipes which are no longer oval but trapezoidal. There is a revised rear apron: so too, at the front. A new style of 18 inch alloy is supplied. Changes inside the car see a three-spoke steering wheel and alterations to the instrument display.
Thus, if you have recently bought the "old model" no one is hardly going to notice, except chaps like Sam. The CLS profile is still the eye-catcher. It has been described as "banana shaped". It is not like a banana at all. If you tipped it upside down, though, it would be boat-shaped, sort of.
Prices open at £46,255 for the 221 bhp 320CDI diesel V6, developing 398 lb ft of torque, which means it pulls very strongly at low engine speed. Like all CLS versions, it has a seven-speed Tiptronic automatic gearbox. Its official average consumption is 37.2mpg and the carbon trail is a not bad 200g/km. The 0-62mph sprint time is seven seconds.
Prefer petrol? There's the 6.2 litre, 507bhp, 464 lb ft CLS 63 AMG which will roar to 62mph in 4.5 seconds, returning 19.5mpg. Cost: £76,050. No?
Another choice is the model I tested, the CLS 350, with a 288bhp version of the well-liked 3498cc V6 engine. It costs £46,955 and returns 31mpg. Its 0-62mph time is 6.7 seconds and its maximum speed is restricted to 155 miles an hour. This is a very sweet combination, and the lightest of all the CLS models.
It is a dream to drive, feeling more agile than the nearest saloon version. The rear doors are far more useful than no-rear-doors on a real coupe. The boot is shallow and long, and does not extend into the car because the seatbacks do not fold away.
Visibility through the rear window is hardly brilliant, with a brake-light hump on the lower edge blocking out anything really close. The front and rear audible and visual parking sensors were extremely accurate and worth the extra £605 if you are not familiar with fine parking technique. The "black" bird's eye maple in peregrine grey sheen, made an impressive scallop across the dashboard but costs an additional £1,100 over the standard burr walnut.
Other things: chromed door caps, inch-perfect navigation (a £1,995 package), tyre pressure monitors, 80 litre tank, "pre-safe" crash anticipation and protection, metallic paint (flint grey as shown), black leather upholstery.
Model Mercedes-Benz CLS 320CDiPrice £46,255
Engine 2 litre diesel
Top Speed 155 mph
0-60 6.9 sec
Fuel 37 mpg
The full article contains 834 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
