Welcome then to the inside of a Mercedes AMG CLS 53, Mercedes AMG 53 CLS? It’s the new
Mercedes CLS, welcome inside it. It’s a 53 because it’s not a 43 which is a halfway
house AMG but it’s not a 63 which is the full fat AMG, this is a 53. The significance of
that is that this is not just a new CLS, this is a brand new Mercedes AMG powertrain, it
introduces AMG to the world of hybrids or it introduces hybrids to the world of AMG
and that’s the most significant, this new car aside, we’ll come to the new car in
a minute! Let’s deal with this new powertrain first because it’s really complicated.
Tobias Moers, the boss of AMG, loves a V8, right? Proper V8 bloke, proper car bloke, you’d
like him, I like him, he’s good fun. Not all cars can have a V8, not all AMG’s can
have a V8 because they’re thirsty, they’re loud, they’re so on and so on. The world’s
got to get a bit greener hasn’t it, I suppose? So anyway, they’ve produced this sort of
halfway house AMG models, the 43 which is a 4-litre inline 6 with a bit more poke than
usual, this new 53 model is moved on from that a bit again. It has a 3-litre inline
6-cylinder engine, petrol engine, which is very smooth, because inline 6-cylinder engines
are naturally perfectly balanced but on top of that it has, 1. a twin scroll turbo charger,
2. an electric compressor, an electric turbo, an electric supercharger if you want to give it that name, that’s
primarily there to fill the torque gap in the turbo lag from the turbo charger, but
then also on top of that it also has what they call EQ boost, I don’t know why I’m
pointing to the back, it’s actually in between the engine and the gearbox. The EQ is a starter
motor / alternator, it adds another 20-odd horsepower to the engine’s 425bhp or so
but it also adds something like 120 lb ft of torque, which is a lot! Anyway all of those
three things combined, and it’s really complicated this right, because the air goes in and it
goes round, it goes through the turbocharger but then it can get sucked down by the electric
compressor before it’s even gone through the normal thing, then it comes back and it
just … it’s complicated. Alright, some companies you would trust to get that right,
I think Mercedes is probably one of them. By the time it’s gone through all of that,
it’s gone through the boosty electric bit as well, it then drives through a 9-speed
automatic gearbox, primarily to the rear wheels and it goes to the front wheels when they
lose grip. Got it? I’m still not entirely sure I’ve got it, but what that means is,
this is an AMG but it’s not the fire breathing V8 AMG on this new CLS, which is - as you’ll
know - the third generation, I can’t believe we’re on the third generation of this car
already, it’s the E-class based, so it’s a big saloon, but it’s a more coupe-ish
E-class, if you like. So it’s still got four doors, they are frameless, and it’s
got a very swoopy roof line, it’s got a lower roof line in the back so it’s not
as spacious inside - it’s got a smaller boot - it’s not as spacious inside as an
E-class but it’s about the same size, it’s just cooler and more stylish. Now in previous
times there’s been a proper V8 AMG version of it. You won’t get one this time because
AMG is also introducing its own stand alone four-door model called the GT4 which is based on, rather
than being based on the aluminium architecture that sits underneath the GT, the GT4 despite still
being called GT, will have Mercedes large car platform which this is on, the E-class
is on, the S-class is also on. So anyway, that will be the big four-door GT coupe-ish
thing and then there’s the E-class which retains at 63 V8, then there is the CLS which
now the most AMG-ish one, is this. Got that? I’m still not sure I’ve got that but we’ll
get there. What’s it like? Well inside it’s really lovely actually, I really like this.
It’s made out of really beautifully constructed materials, it feels a grade above executive
car, pushing towards luxury car stuff as I suppose it might because this, they haven’t
announced a price for it yet but it’s got to be £65,000/£70,000 I should think but
what I really like are these beautiful little air vents that look like sort of turbine blades
and they’re backed, they’ve got this little LED in the middle which shines out and then
in low light conditions it just reflects and glints off them, really, really thoughtful,
nicely done. You can get three different types of suspension on CLS in general, not necessarily
53 AMG in particular but you can get standard steel springs, then there’s adaptive damp
steel springs and then there are air springs, which this has got. So it rides very well,
really controlled, really neatly, doesn’t really suffer the sort of sproing that some
air sprung cars do, it rode that bump there really nicely. The steering is nice too, it’s direct,
it’s accurate, there’s not loads of feel and feedback, there never is in a big executive
car, this is a large car don’t forget. Just on this nice stretch of road, it turns with
nice agility and it’s got just enough, I think, character. It’s not a kind of full
AMG if you want to consider it like that but it is a pleasing car to drive. Now what I
have not noticed so far is that it sounds particularly AMG-ish. So let’s put the gearbox
through into manual, oh there was a little ‘brap’ there. It’s quiet, it’s refined,
it’s really smooth - it’s a 6, of course it is - it’s also turbocharged, so that
does dampen the noise of things sometimes. It’s not a snarly V8 like AMG’s 4-litre
twin-turbo, so this is not then the full fat AMG experience and you’re not going to get
that in a CLS which I think maybe is a bit of a shame but we’ll see how the GT4 works
out, see how expensive the GT4 is too. In the meantime, they’ve expanded what AMG
means so that it not longer means just anger, fire-breathing V8-y oomph. It also now means
this smooth, semi-sporting, sophisticated feel, does that undermine the AMG brand? I don’t
think it does actually, I think it just about does enough, this car, to go, yeah I’m quite
good fun, you’ll quite like me, I’ve got a bit of a sporting edge but actually quite
easy to live with day-to-day as well, I’ve got quite a lot of time for that.