What we like
- Sleek stylish silhouette
- Well-tuned suspension offers an extremely comfortable ride
- Well-insulated cabin
- MB.OS system is polished, responsive and easy to use
- Fancy interior
What we dislike
- Lacklustre powertrain due to slow-reacting gearbox
- Odd ergonomic quirks
- Limited rear headroom
There has been quite a fair bit of excitement around the new Mercedes-Benz CLA. It is the first car to be built upon the brand’s all-new Mercedes-Benz Modular Architecture (MMA), which can be configured for both fully electric and hybrid drivetrains.
Since its introduction, the CLA, being a compact luxury car, has always been a popular entry-point to the German luxury brand. Boasting a range of over 800km, the electric CLA has been making waves, but where does that leave this hybridised internal combustion version?
Here’s how you differentiate the hybrid from the EV
The new CLA features the latest iteration of the shark nose-inspired front end that has always been a part of the CLA’s design language. While the grille retains its shape from before, the CLA gets a fresh new head light design.
Like what you see on the Smart #1 (which is also designed by Mercedes-Benz), the CLA gets a pair of head lights connected by a narrow strip, and the three-pointed star lighting element that we saw on the CLA concept has also made its way onto the production car. But what’s intriguing here is the visual effect of the pair of head lights being above the grille instead of in line with it, which is a departure from Mercedes-Benz’s past designs.
Otherwise, the CLA retains its attractive coupe silhouette, with a roof that tapers smoothly towards a rear-end that reminds of the recently introduced CLE Coupe. Over here, the taillight mirrors the general shape of the head lights, including the three-pointed star light signatures.
While the EV and hybrid variants look almost identical, here’s how you tell them apart – the hybrid has a regular grille with illuminated surrounds, while the EV gets a panel with 142 individually illuminated stars.
Fancy interior turned up to 11
Being the first car to be built on a brand-new platform, the CLA also comes with an interior that is the first of its kind. The new cabin includes a massive panel that stretches the width of the car — this has got to be the flattest, most upright dashboard that I have ever seen.
The single plane houses illuminated turbine-shaped air vents on each end, along with up to three displays: the 10.25-inch instrument cluster, a 14-inch infotainment display, and a 14-inch touchscreen for the passenger. However, as this car is a base AMG Line variant, it isn’t fitted with the passenger display (local CLA 200 AMG Line Sport models will be equipped with it). Instead, we get a panel full of three-pointed star motifs that light up along with the ambient lighting.
And this brings us to the main highlight of the cabin — modern day Mercedes-Benz has been known for its showy interior, and it’s implemented in full force here. You won’t find a lack of ambient lighting within the CLA. In fact, you might even start to wonder if ‘ambient’ is the right word for them – with brightness turned up, and set to the iconic Malibu Sunset colourway, you’ll feel like you’ve accidentally driven into a neon sign shop.
Apart from the fancy lighting, the tri-split-spoke AMG steering returns here, but it now features a physical toggle for the cruise control speed and a knob for controlling media volume. The rest of the buttons, however, remains to be of the haptic style that isn’t the most intuitive to operate on the go.
The entire cabin is almost new, but the biggest upgrade lies within the infotainment system. The CLA is equipped with the fourth-generation MBUX, running on the new MB.OS. During my time with the car, the system appears polished, quick to respond and is easy to navigate, while wireless Android Auto and Apple CarPlay add to its usability as well. I’ve found it to be quite an upgrade to the past MBUX systems.
Luxurious comfort on par with its larger siblings
The fluid and intuitive user interface isn’t the only upgrade that the CLA has gotten; there is another area that has seen some tremendous improvement, and you can only feel it when the car is on the move.
While Mercedes-Benz is a brand that is known for its luxury cars, its compact offerings has never really been known to be particularly plush or pampering, but that changes with the new CLA. On the go, the car is well insulated from environmental noise; wind noise and road noise are also well managed. And the most impressive part is the ride quality, with most bumps on the roads soaked up by the suspension — I observed a ride quality close to what the E-Class offers.
That said, looking sleek has its drawbacks: Headroom in the new CLA isn’t impressive. I’m only 170cm tall and yet there’s hardly any gap between my head and the headliner in the back seats. I suspect that the EV-ready platform might have added some heft to the floor of the car (to accommodate the EV battery), encroaching into the vertical space within the car.
A decent powertrain, hampered by a slow-reacting transmission
The CLA 200 AMG Line is now powered by a 1. 5-litre turbocharged four-cylinder producing 161bhp and 250Nm of torque, which is assisted by a 48V electric motor that produces up to 30bhp. This allows the car to complete the century sprint in 8.0 seconds and has a top speed of 232km/h.
While Mercedes-Benz calls it a hybrid, the CLA200 is actually more akin to a mild hybrid — it is able to coast and maintain considerable speed with the engine turned off, relying on the electric motor. Thanks to the electric assistance, the CLA moves off the line rather swiftly. However, the gearbox is rather slow to react and prefers to stay in higher gears (likely for efficiency). This results in occasions when you give it a fair bit of throttle, but the car takes a moment to react to the demand for power.
While the new 1.5-litre engine seems strong in its mid-range, dragging it out to higher RPMs leads to diminishing returns. These characteristics have resulted in a rather dull and uninspiring experience.
Odd ergonomic choices and quirks
Although power and handling of the CLA 200 is rather satisfactory, there are some ergonomic quirks within the car. The column-mounted gear shifter is classically Mercedes-Benz, but they have also removed the paddle shifters and relegated that job to the same shifter.
In manual mode, you pull the shifter towards you to downshift, and push it towards to dashboard to upshift. As it is located to the right of the steering, this motion is not only awkward, but counterintuitive as well (you normally pull the right paddle to upshift). It might have been a better choice to have removed the option to shift manually entirely instead of such an oddball implementation.
And that isn’t all. Perhaps as part of the move to an EV-ready platform, there is no dedicated engine start button to be found. Instead, shifting the car to D starts the engine and putting it in park shuts it off. If you want to keep the car idling, you’ll have to put it in Neutral and activate the parking brake — but here’s another catch, you push on the parking brake toggle instead of pulling it to activate it.
The electric CLA might be the better option
The new-generation CLA has improved in many ways — the fourth-generation MBUX, sublime ride quality and insulation are all properly impressive. But it also comes with a fair share of quirks and a powertrain that, while improved, still leaves much to be desired.
Although I haven’t experienced the new electric CLA, I suspect it might be the one to opt for, as that would likely resolve my gripes with the powertrain, while further enhancing the comfort of the car. Most of the quirks would also likely be non-existent as well — there’s no need for paddle shifters, and EVs don’t need to idle to keep everything running.
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This article was first published in sgCarMart.
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