Peace of Art ...The New MERCEDES CLA

REVIEW

The 2015 Mercedes-Benz CLA-Class sedan is the Germany luxury brand's first-ever front-wheel-drive car in the U.S. market--and it's priced, styled, and engineered to grab eyeballs and younger buyers before competitors Audi and BMW have competing products ready. The Audi A3 sedan will arrive next year, and BMW will offer its riposte a year or two after that, but for today, the CLA has that market niche to itself among the Germans.

Instead, it goes head to head with the likes of the well-meaning but unimpressive Acura ILX, the handsome, supple and quiet Buick Verano, and--in its hotter CLA45 AMG version--the BMW 1-Series. The Verano and ILX have base prices below $30,000 and lots of luxury features like the newest Benz. But neither has anything like the prestige of the Mercedes badge. The BMW does, but its M edition is gone, on an untimely time-out.
 

The CLA is a scaled-down imitation of the prettiest Mercedes on sale today, the CLS, and that's its biggest ace. It may be as short as a Civic, but its elegant profile and frameless glass counter the compact-car blahs, and chip away visually at the front end's height. The sporty cockpit lifts its inspiration from the SLK, not the C-Class, and the mix-and-match aesthetic works extremely well. That is, until you scan the LCD screen planted awkwardly on the dash, instead of integrated into the center stack.

 

Compact dimensions place the CLA in a vast class of cars that ranges from the Ford Focus to the Honda Civic, or to more upscale machinery like the BMW 1-Series, Acura ILX, and Buick Verano. It's 182.3 inches long, with a wheelbase of 106.3 inches. As with most of those cars, back-seat room is tight, with minimal headroom for medium-sized adults and somewhat difficult entry and exit in through the rear doors. Trunk space is good, with a flat load floor, and the CLA has a few useful storage bins in the cabin for small items.

The CLA 250's drivetrain pairs a 2.0-liter turbo four with 208 horsepower to a seven-speed, dual-clutch transmission. It's a combination with 0-60 mph times of 6.7 seconds and a 149-mph top speed in its portfolio, underpinned with some grunty four-cylinder noises. The transmission wants to be in sport or manual mode, for quicker shift responses, though: even with paddle controls, it gets caught off-guard. Gas mileage numbers of 30 mpg combined are easily reachable, though the available all-wheel-drive system is sure to shave a mile per gallon off those numbers.

 

The CLA45 AMG recasts that engine in myriad ways, from block to pistons to turbocharger to its 26.1 psi of boost. Output shoots to 355 horsepower, 0-60 mph times fall to 4.5 seconds, and top speed rises to 155 mph. All-wheel drive is standard, and a reprogrammed dual-clutch with three driving modes suits up to harness the power much more effectively than in the CLA 250.
Unlike any other mainstream Mercedes before it, the CLA's