2014 Mercedes-Benz CLA250
Keg Stand: The Mercedes-Benz CLA upends the traditional German luxury sedan.
Highs, Lows, and Verdict >
Highs:
Looks fancy, makes good numbers, flirts with a low-$30,000 sticker.
Lows:
Light on luxury, harsh ride, not that cheap once you equip it.
Verdict:
When you pay for half a Mercedes, you get half a Mercedes.
From the December 2013 Issue of Car and Driver
TESTED
It’s been nearly 500 years since the passage of the Reinheitsgebot, the “German Beer Purity Law” decreeing that beer shall be made from only three ingredients: water, barley, and hops. (And yeast, of course, though its contribution to the fermentation process wouldn’t be understood until a few centuries later.) The letter of the land until 1988, it holds considerable sway over brewers even today, a testament to the country’s mania for integrity and tradition. It’s this same sort of obsessive attention to detail that we so often admire in German luxury sedans, at least the ones we find as satisfying as a stein of authentic lager.
This newest four-door from the fatherland, the Mercedes-Benz CLA, comes off more like Bud Light in comparison. Indeed, the CLA is a potion pitched at mainstream America, a less intoxicating—and less costly—take on the com*pany’s “four-door coupe” trope. Its MSRP starts at just $29,900 before the $925 destination charge. While this is important for landing it on those “Best Cars Under $30,000” slide shows that pass for shopping advice on the web, that’s nearly six grand less than the price of the C-class, the car that’s spent the last two decades serving as the Mercedes of choice for Americans who can’t really afford one.
The CLA250’s comely interior design is let down by a few chintzy pieces.
Visually, the CLA is the most interesting thing to come out of Stuttgart in a decade. The refreshing lack of straight, formal lines gives the car a distinct identity, rather than the look of a smaller progeny. Sitting still, the CLA looks like an arrow that has just left the bowstring, styling that should hit the target market the way William Tell split his apple. The CLA’s convex curves and droopy fascias aren’t new ideas, but they all work better here than on similarly styled products from BMW and Volkswagen, or even the Mercedes CLS that served as inspiration. Those who say these sorts of lines demand a larger canvas, like the new S-class, or grouse about the CLA’s tall hood and stubby ends are as wrong as nonalcoholic beer.
The CLA is the first front-drive Mercedes to appear in the American market. (A four-wheel-drive CLA will be available in early 2014.) As it turns out, this move from rear-drive is not the worst affront to tradition. The transversely mounted, turbocharged 2.0-liter four-cylinder is well matched to the car, its 208 horses enough to do the zero-to-60-mph chug in 6.3 seconds. The sole transmission, a seven-speed dual-clutch automatic, shifts smoothly in stand*ard mode, keeps the direct-injected engine ticking and buzzing along at higher revs in sport, and offers a manual mode for deploying the paddle shifters.
The CLA exhibits no trace of torque steer unless you really hammer it mid-turn, in which case it will overwhelm the front tires, even if they’re the optional summer perform*ance Goodyear Eagle F1 Asymmetric 2s on 18-inch wheels ($500). The subsequent stability-control intervention is more of an event here than it is in a rear-drive Mercedes, but the CLA is a good handler overall, pulling 0.90 g on our skidpad. It also stops well, decelerating from 70 mph in 160 feet.
But those numbers don’t really reflect how the CLA drives. The typical light and fluid Mercedes steering feel is inverted, so rather than boosting assist to make a big car feel smaller, the CLA’s heavy helm stands in for more substance. Its on-center heft means the CLA tracks resolutely straight but feels isolated from the driver. Once you dial in some steering effort, the wheel is more playful, though feedback doesn’t improve much.
The suspension is more out of character. While the CLA has good body control under cornering, impact harshness is a problem. It’s bad on pockmarked pavement and worse on big bumps, where the CLA can and will bottom out. We can blame some of it on those 18-inch run-flat tires, which also contribute to a substantial amount of road noise emanating from the wheel wells, but the CLA’s short, 106.3-inch wheelbase is also at fault. If the typical Mercedes ride of, say, an E-class is like a high-end hotel mattress with a pillow top, the CLA is a sleeping bag on the floor of a youth hostel. There is likely an easy solution, as Mercedes fits the CLA with the European-market sport suspension as standard equipment. We suspect that American buyers will demand a softer setup.
They might also ask for better fuel economy. The CLA’s official EPA ratings are 26 mpg in the city, 38 on the highway, and a psychologically satisfying 30 mpg combined. We managed just 25 overall, and in six fill-ups we never saw our mileage crack 27. Mercedes claims that the CLA has the lowest drag coefficient of any production car at 0.23 and has equipped it with a stop-start system, which unfortunately operates with all the subtlety of an oompah band at Oktoberfest. But as with all cars equipped with small turbocharged engines designed to deliver impressive laboratory CAFE numbers without sacrificing real-world performance, a light touch on the accelerator matters more to fuel economy than any technology.
Inside, there are some nice touches. The CLA’s dashboard borrows heavily from the Mercedes parts bin, with the main instrument cluster and air-vent designs similar to those in pricier models. But there are also parts that are not so nice to touch, like the cheap plastic in the console between the seats. Keep your eyes on the road and you won’t have to look at that, but it’s harder to miss the standard 5.8-inch multimedia display screen. It sticks up from the top of the dash like something installed by your cousin who used to work at Mickey Shorr. Its LCD has a pixel density closer to a Lite-Brite than an Apple Retina display.
All four high-backed sport seats (the rear bench has two integrated facsimiles of the front buckets) do look high-end, particularly at night, when their headrests emit mood lighting. Comfortable and supportive in front, they block the forward view in the rear, where it’s already cramped by a low roofline. The cockpit is cozy, but it’s a comfortable intimacy that reminds us of compact sedans from generations past.
We get it that this is not a big, imposing Teutonic sled with a powerful engine and a sumptuous ride. It’s not even a kraut-rocking handling machine with an unflappable demeanor. But that also means it doesn’t feel much like a Mercedes. Refinement is lacking. Doors don’t slam with authority.
The vehicle-certification label says the car was assembled in Hungary. Does this matter? Yes, it does, like substituting rice for barley in the brew house. Mercedes must be hoping a low base price will entice shoppers who never imagined they might be able to own a Benz. Also trusting that they won’t recognize what’s missing from this particular Mercedes experience.
[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7gst2VVLso[/video]
