Mercedes-Benz CLA

When in Rome, do as the Romans. Like many other pieces of popular culture, this phrase has proven itself an excellent advice millions of times. Mercedes has already shown several cars which two decades ago would be seen as an apocalypse prediction, but most of them were experiments, to find out what the market would want for the near future. Only some turned successful, but the overall result was excellent. The car you’re about to meet is the best prove that these Germans did find the right track to follow, once again.

Like many specialized texts have already stated, if the Mercedes cars were people with some sort of family relations, CLA would surely be a son whose both parents were the current generations of A-Class and CLS – this last one, in turn, could even be thought as a result of E-Class with CL. But before thinking of very unusual ways to use the family concept, the Germans deserve the bigger applauses for obtaining that mentioned knowledge concerning the car market in nowadays. In other words, since CLS’s concept has proven itself successful in sales and harmless to E-Class, later they started to think of reducing this formula’s scale. On the other hand, it’s easy to see they’ve finally found how to make A-Class prosper, so it would be very nice to take more advantage of that.

So the sedan showed at these pictures is another result of the very concept that in Renault has just generated Captur. Examples like these are highly unlikely to bring conceptual revolutions because they’re the mere merge of other concepts, but once again this doesn’t come as a complaint at all. The truly meaning here is that Mercedes realized that cars like CLA are the right track to follow, so from now on it’ll be very hard to see this automaker releasing another “experimental” car. It is true that they needed to forget some of the old rules, but the final result is the much wider propagation of the image they’ve built through all these years.

There’s no doubt that image includes their particular standards for comfort, design, quality and performance, but what would those forgotten rules be? One of them is the front-wheel-drive, so far only used by the hatchback CLA shares platform with. But these cars are much more related than that: the newcomer is its sedan version, which is confirmed by the very similar front and side sections. But their biggest difference is conceptual, rather than at the measures: the hatchback is clearly much more sporty, designed to attract younger buyers while CLA still seek this public but using a more elegant style, with a less obvious way of expressing A-Class casuality.

The spec list will show this car isn’t bigger than North-American compact sedans – Dodge Dart, for example, is 0.6 inch longer and has a 0.1 inch longer wheelbase – but offers very much from Mercedes’ equipments portfolio, of course. However, there’s an optionals list including panoramic sunroof, aluminum or wood internal details and item packages: Sport, Premium and Multimedia. Other specs concern the engine options: 120-hp 1.6L for CLA 180, 150-hp 1.6L for CLA 200, 210-hp turbo 2.0L for CLA 250 and 170-hp diesel 2.1 for CLA 220 CDI, always with a seven-speed dual-clutch transmission and the optional 4Matic all-wheel-drive. But while you wait for the AMG version, here’s an interesting tidbit: even the urban versions have a 0.23 drag coefficient. This is one of the best numbers of the current production cars.

Lançamento no Brasil (22/01/2014)

Agora já é possível desfrutar dos encantos do mais novo Classe A em uma carroceria de três volumes – ela tenta ficar a meio-caminho entre sedã e cupê. A estreia brasileira do CLA se faz com a First Edition, por R$ 150.500. Por enquanto ela é versão única, mas é de se esperar que corresponda à mais completa das que ele virá a receber por aqui. Essa seria a explicação mais aceitável para o preço que lhe colocaria em pé de igualdade com o BMW Série 3 ou com o Audi A4, em vez do concorrente de nicho A3 Sedan. Por outro lado, vale notar que esta edição não é a mesma que o fabricante tem usado para estrear seus modelos na Europa: aquela se chama Edition 1 e usa uma série de pequenos acessórios visuais exclusivos, mas sem alterar a mecânica.

Como era de se esperar, o CLA vem carregado de equipamentos. Estão lá ar-condicionado automático, sete airbags, bancos em couro sintético, controles de estabilidade e tração, farois bi-xenônio, rodas de liga leve aro 18”, sistema start/stop, teto solar panorâmico, o típico pacote de controles eletrônicos de segurança passiva e a central multimídia Command, que inclui tela de 7”, acesso à Internet, conexão Bluetooth e navegação GPS. Esta versão é baseada na CLA 200, que por sua vez é equivalente à A200 do hatchback. Portanto, o sedã também usa o motor 1.6 turbo, que gera 156 cv e 25,5 kgfm, e o câmbio automatizado de sete marchas e dupla embreagem. Este conjunto lhe leva de 0 a 100 km/h em 8s5 e à máxima de 230 km/h.