Mercedes has lifted the veils off their all-new CLA
Shooting Brake at the 2019 Geneva Motor Show, adding a touch of practicality to
the four-door Coupe model’s expressive styling. The new car is more grown up compared
to its predecessor, measuring an extra 48 mm in length, an
additional 53 mm in width and 2 mm in height,
while the wheelbase has grown by 30 mm.
The exterior aspect of the all-new CLA Shooting
Brake doesn’t come as a shock. The Shooting Brake features the same “sharknose”
frond end design, with an elongated hood and striking powerdomes. Since the car
utilizes Mercedes‘ Sensual Purity design language, there’s a considerably less
pronounced shoulder line, while the entire body features soft sculptural
curvatures. Of course, the main addition, compared to the regular CLA, is the
trunk, which has an 871 mm opening and a volume of 505 liters, the old model’s trunk had a 635 mm opening and a 495
liters in volume.
The interior of the CLA Shooting Brake is identical
to that of the Coupe in terms of architecture and available on-board
technology. You have your widescreen display, three air vents with a sporty
turbine look, ambient lighting and so on. Then there’s the MBUX system, which
has become ever smarter since its last iteration.
Mercedes says that the CLA Shooting Brake, together
with its Coupe sibling, have the sportiest driving characteristics out of all
their new compact models. The wheel suspensions are designed for ride comfort
and running in silence with acoustic control arms that decouple vibrations at
the rear and hydromounts at the front. Meanwhile, a large stabilizer bar
reduces the roll angle and the Adaptive Damping System allows the driver to
switch between driving modes. Then there’s aerodynamics, where despite its wider track, the cd
value of the CLA Shooting Brake is as low as 0.26, although it’s more than the
Coupe’s (0.23).
As for active safety, the CLA Shooting Brake has
borrowed heavily from the S-Class, where it can now look up to 500 meters ahead and even drive partially autonomously in certain situations. It
features Active Distance Assist, Active Steer Assist, Active Lane Change
Assist, Active Park Assist and more.
Powering this stylish little Benz will be a wide
range of diesel and petrol units, with either a manual or dual-clutch
transmission options – to go with front-wheel drive or all-wheel drive setups.
The flagship spec will be the CLA 250 Shooting Brake, spurred on by a 225 PS four-cylinder petrol unit, mated to a 7G-DCT gearbox.
Mercedes will launch the CLA Shooting Brake in
markets around the world in September.
