Here's a word that perfectly describes the way the car
industry has evolved over the past 15 years.
Niche.
Making an impact these days is as much about finding some
unoccupied space in the market as is it is competing with
established competition.
So just about everything is a niche nowadays.
In fact, there are so many niches and sub-niches--
SUVs, SAVs, CCs, and well, WTFs--
that they almost blend into one homogeneous whole.
And suddenly a Ford Mondeo seems rarer than an
uncontroversial Lewis Hamilton tweet because within all those
niches, no one actually makes saloons or sedans anymore.
Unsurprisingly, a cool-looking low rider from AMG with silly
performance is a great car.
But I get the feeling that the shooting-brake format could be
a massive hit, especially in Europe.
With a 557-horsepower V8 it's mental.
But even with a 200-horsepower diesel, much of this car's
appeal will still shine through.
Good times at Mercedes.
So this is the latest niche.
The CLS63 shooting brake.
Hm.
A pretty obvious recipe now.
A big 5.5-liter bi-turbo V8, which in this particular
machine has 557-horsepower, 531 foot-pounds of torque.
I'm not entirely sure whether you can get more torque in
this thing.
Because you can't, from launch, buy the engine in the
lowest state of power tune, which is about 525-horsepower,
because apparently everyone said they wanted the big,
faster engine anyway.
So they didn't bother doing the small engine.
Weighs about 60 kilograms more than a standard CLS.
And, in the UK, is about 83,000 pounds before you've
thrown lots of money's worth of paint and interior.
But we can talk about that in a minute.
Because this car does look reasonably spectacular.
It is, in many ways, the least surprising car
I'll drive this year.
Because you know what you're going to get.
You've got a lot of performance.
And you've got--
[TIRES SQUEALING]
a lot of that.
But of course, it's endlessly surprising because it's not so
much pace, and it's got so much space.
And it's just unbelievable how much fun you can have in such
a big car these days.
We get so used to it--
Yeah.
It's an interesting recipe.
So I suppose the question is, first of all, does the CLS
need another niche?
Is the shooting brake just rather stepping on the toes of
the E-class estate?
Or does it feel like rather a special little car?
I'm sort of leaning towards the latter, it has to be said.
This is a lovely, lovely machine.
It feels a bit more bespoke, a bit more special with this
lower roof line, the narrower window glass line.
It just feels like you're in something a
bit out of the ordinary.
Not a normal car.
But yet it's got so much space.
I think the decision to make this car a five-seater was a
little bit inspired.
The middle seat in the back is not big.
That's the one, that's the naughty step, really.
If your child's behaving badly, that's the one that
goes in the middle.
But it's entirely usable.
And it does open the car up for a whole
new audience, I think.
Sounds strange, doesn't it?
We're talking about niches within niches and opening up
to a new audience.
This car has the feel, potentially, of
being a bit of a cult.
It's got unique style.
It's got crazy performance.
This one with the locking diff will do, yeah, two black lines
pretty much anywhere.
So as a package, really interesting car.
I have a few observations on the dynamics.
Does it feel very similar to the standard CLS?
Of course it does.
60 kilograms is not that noticeable.
It might feel a little less agile.
And the weight is right over the back axle.
So on the one hand, that helps with traction.
On the other, yes, it probably makes the car feel
a little less lazy.
But these are not small, little, nimble
sports cars, are they?
They're great big muscle cars that happen
to be built in Germany.
This car does have the optional limited-slip
differential, which I think transforms the way you can get
the car round the corners.
Without this diff, the thing just wants to light up all the
traction control.
Actually, with the diff, you can leave it in Sport mode,
gives you a bit of slip, and both wheels hook up.
It makes it really quite impressive.
Only a little 2.85 section at the back running 531
foot-pounds of torque.
That's a lot of torque for each of those bits of rubber.
And when you overcome them, yeah.
Things get smoky.
Gearbox is really quite good if you
just leave it in Comfort.
Of course, this Mercedes MCT 7-speed is
actually a doctored automatic.
It's not like a double-clutch gearbox.
So it does mean that when you use it in manual mode, you do
have to just wait a little bit for each
change to come through.
But that just doesn't worry me at all.
Because in Comfort, in Normal mode, it's a really nice
automatic with a nice amount of creep.
And it just allows this car at low speed to feel like quite a
low-performance car when you want it to.
Doesn't mean it's boring.
And of course, it's always burbling
and making that noise.
In that respect, AMG have kind of got BMW a bit
licked at the moment.
Because their cars feel quite spectacular at low speed and
make very few demands of the driver.
Inside, loads of room.
Very nice cabin design, I have to say.
Not for me to judge what looks right and wrong, or good or
bad, but to me personally, this is a great place.
And it's high-quality as well.
Mercedes is back to making cars that feel really, really
expensive inside.
Don't know about you, but within the sort of discipline
of practical performance, I've always preferred estate cars.
Because if you're gonna make the leap to have four doors
and a load of performance, why not have a
massive boot as well?
Because it just adds to the absurdity of how much poke
you've got and how usable your car is.
This is a nice balance.
The boot itself is actually quite big.
All too often when companies make these shooting-brake-y
coupe-ish type cars, they end up being--
because the design's a bit contrived and a bit difficult,
they end up being less practical than the car on
which they're based.
And then you think, well, what's the point?
But this actually offers a really useful extra amount of
room over a CLS.
The boot is really big.
And also, if you dig around underneath the boot floor,
there's a load of space in there as well.
It's got some lovely touches.
This one's got the operational Bang & Olufsen hi-fi with a
great big amplifier in the boot and a subwoofer which
will rattle your fillings whenever you want to.
Are there any downsides?
Well, it's big and it's heavy and it'll chew consumables.
I had the brakes pretty much on fire a minute ago chasing
this lovely bloke in his 997 Turbo S. It uses
quite a bit of fuel.
Although I have to say, compared to the previous
normally aspirated V8, this is much more fuel efficient
because it's got stop-start.
You don't have to try so hard to make the thing move,
because of all that torque low down.
One other observation, the steering does have quite a lot
of soft centering on it.
Obviously, there's not much coming back at you.
It's very accurate.
But I noticed that just on those last couple of degrees,
when you want to just release your grip on the wheel and
just let the wheel feed back into the center, it moves a
little bit quicker than expected.
Throttle response is really quite good.
It doesn't really matter how quickly the turbos spool up
because the thing appears to just have urge everywhere.
I mean, I don't know whether it's got an
anti-lag system or what.
But it is remarkable how much poke it's got.
Just put your foot down like that and away you go.
I love these things.
They're just faintly ridiculous, aren't they?
It's a big, practical car with massive performance.
It costs an awful lot of money and yet it offers an awful lot
of ability.
If there's any type of car that deserves to be worth a
lot of money, it's this one because it can do so much for
so many people.