Attractive, intelligent – and at the same time practical: The new Mercedes-Benz CLA will also be available as a Shooting Brake from September.
Just like the four-door CLA Coupé, the Shooting Brake puts its own spin on the design idiom of sensual purity and turns the interior into a coolly designed user interface for intelligent digital technology. From the striking sharknose at the front of the vehicle to the clean edge with accentuated surfaces, the design displays elegant athletics right down to the gently muscular rear. The latter increases the CLA Shooting Brake’s functionality. While just as much a designer piece as the CLA Coupé, it offers more space for spontaneity, be it on an extended shopping spree or for sports and outdoor activities where space is required.
The interior of the CLA Shooting Brake displays the modern, cool and high quality ambience of the Coupé. In addition, it offers passengers more space than the predecessor model in the shoulder, head and elbow areas.
The digital environment of the CLA’s technophile customers is integrated into the interior in a creatively and technically pioneering way. Thanks to MBUX – Mercedes-Benz User Experience with intelligent interior assistants and refined voice recognition – operation of ever more functions is becoming more natural and much simpler.
Great emphasis is placed on individualisation in the new Shooting Brake with an increasing and diverse range of apps and services, which can be downloaded from Mercedes me depending on your own preferences and called up via MBUX.
This CLA is thus aimed at customers for whom, just a few years ago, Mercedes‑Benz was not the first thing that came to mind when they were looking to buy a car. “We want to address young individualists with the particularly expressive design of the CLA Coupé and CLA Shooting Brake. Furthermore, the new CLA Shooting Brake offers more space than its predecessor – for sports equipment and much more”, states Britta Seeger, Member of the Board of Management of Daimler AG responsible for Mercedes-Benz Cars sales.
Mercedes-Benz introduced the first generation of the CLA Shooting Brake in 2015: a five-door, clearly a Coupé in terms of its proportions, and yet with considerable effective load space thanks to the roof which continues through to the rear and the rear door. The new CLA Shooting Brake is also a designer car, which in the first instance is emotionally appealing on account of its proportions: a long bonnet, compact greenhouse with coupé-like windowlines, muscular shoulders over the rear wheel arch and a supplely crouched rear, which clearly shows its sports car genes. The outline of the frameless windows is identical to the outline of the Coupé’s up to the B-pillar. Behind it, the windowline runs considerably higher, which makes entering for rear passengers easier. Elongated into the rear, it tapers off into an acute angle.
The distinctive front end tilted forward (“sharknose”) and the elongated bonnet with striking powerdomes form dynamic style elements. The number of character lines has been reduced, for example, the shoulder line has been completely dispensed with. The surfaces are structured with soft sculptural curvatures.
These emphasise the outlines and proportions and define the vehicle’s character. It is 48 millimetres longer than before, 53 mm wider but 2 mm lower. The flat headlamps, the low-slung bonnet and the diamond radiator grille with the central star, mark the typical Mercedes-Benz sports car look. The narrow two-part rear lamps and the licence plate positioned in the bumper are typical for the GT rear with a flush transition between the rear bumper and the tailgate. The CLA Shooting Brake strikes an impressive pose on the road and looks athletic from every angle. At 871 millimetres, the boot opening is significantly wider than in the previous model (635 mm).
The interior of the passenger compartment is identical to that of the Coupé. Both CLAs offer unique room architecture, especially on account of the avant-garde instrument panel: the widescreen display is completely free-standing with no hood on the wing-shaped main body of the instrument panel. This stretches continuously from one front door to the other. The lower section of the instrument panel is visually separated from the main body of the instrument cluster by a “trench”. The three air vents are incorporated here, and their sporty turbine look appeals to the senses even without the lighting.
Like the previous model, the new CLA Shooting Brake will be manufactured at the Kecskemét plant (Hungary) and comes onto the market in September 2019.
