Audi A7 vs Merc CLS vs Maser
One man’s compromised saloon is another’s ultra-desirable four-door coupe. New Mercedes CLS and Audi A7 meet Maserati’s Quattroporte
IT MUST BE horribly tough being a top executive in the current politically-correct business landscape, shifting unfathomably as it is beneath your feet. You can’t pat an underling on their bum while inviting them for a cheeky after-dinner drink, indulge in long liquid lunches or lock the office geek in the cupboard any more for fear of the HR Gestapo. And the second you take a small bonus for that speedboat you’ve always wanted, those Corbynites from the ground floor will be marching on your second home in Cornwall. All that’s left for a person to enjoy about the business of businessing these days is a flash car – and, fortunately, there’s quite a choice. In fact, too much choice. Choice to the point that there are choices within choices, cars spewing out of other cars and spawning whole new cars. The Mercedes-Benz CLS is almost entirely to blame: 14 years ago, with a sweep of a designer’s pen, it morphed from the blocky E-Class into one long arc of a saloon. Four doors, droopier boot, less room. Made no sense; people loved it.
The Audi A7 followed a similar if slightly more practical course, and now they both have new versions on the old theme. Where the CLS is very much a sexed-up E, the A7 is more of a downsized A8. They meet in the middle at a sales territory known to some as Executive Sports Saloons.
Today’s CLS, complete with spanking new 335bhp 3.0-litre inline-six diesel engine and 4Matic all-wheel drive, comes in at £60,410, while the A7, with a 3.0-litre V6 diesel sprouting mild hybrid technology and a swanky new cabin, is a couple of grand less. Depending on your starting point, and the value you put on style, that’s either a steeply priced E-Class variant or a keenly competitive A8 spin-off.
And coming in from left field, as it usually does, here’s a Maserati that isn’t new but which actually fits in with the Germans remarkably well. The Quattroporte is a saloon with sports heritage hanging off its three prongs, and here fitted with a 3.0-litre V6 diesel. Such exclusivity (and there is no doubt you will be in a more exclusive club for choosing the Maserati) can be found for £79,375.
Of course, should you be the type of businessperson who revels in filling out a spreadsheet and cross-referencing parameters and value-driven goal expectations, your computer would not suggest any of these cars as an answer, being as there are any number of more practical and efficient ways to get about.
But if you’re not head of the accounts department, all three offer a fizzle of pizzazz and a USP or two – none more so, at least on first acquaintance, than the A7. The only disappointment is that there is not a glamorous model stood by the front wheelarch4
and a man with a soft cloth dabbing it every 30 seconds, because it looks inside and out like a concept car on a motor show stand, even on a rainy day in Lincolnshire. Within a few minutes of parking it on my drive I had a builder, a tree surgeon, two neighbours and a dog crowded round it. Even my wife came out to look. I should have charged admission.
While the outside stuff is pretty impressive in the sense that it’s an Audi chamfered and chiselled to an especially muscular degree, the cabin is something else again. Even before I could switch it on and start the digital Fantasia it was drawing gasps from my impromptu audience, thanks to the arty brushed metal sculpting and swathes of jet-black panelling promising new worlds of automotive adventure beneath the inky facade. It’s the future, and it’s in a four-door diesel car that looks like it might fly.
Making less of an immediate impact is the Mercedes. While a good looking car, albeit with a hint of Mustang in the nose and outgoing Peugeot 508 at the rear, the CLS is not as distinctive as its forebears, lacking the baroque splendour of the first version in particular. In a less fabulous colour and without those highly spoked AMG wheels, it might well be anodyne.
But what a colour. It’s called Ruby Black, and at £685 it’s a fairly good-value option. But it’s more than that. The black paint with deep red undercurrents sparkles more brightly in sunlight and looks like a velvet cat: Guinness with a port in it.
The Quattroporte is a more familiar shape, having in this iteration been around for nearly five years, although in truth it has been ploughing this particular furrow for a long time now. Compared to the other two it’s less a coupe and more a three-box luxury saloon with the nose whittled down. (And on that nose, it must be said, is a rather cheap looking plastic trident badge.)
Setting off in the Audi, a vibration through the accelerator pedal makes me think I must have run over a rabbit. But then it seems I’ve taken out a whole colony because the pedal keeps doing it. But no, it appears the car is telling me to drive in a more economical way, not reporting a wildlife cull.
This will become a trend, because the Audi is a very clever car, and it knows it knows better than you. It features plenty of mild-hybrid tech for fuel saving too, with a 48-volt system and regenerative braking feeding a lithium-ion battery and starter-generator, so the car can coast whenever it needs to at up to 99mph, while the start-stop starts stopping before you stop, cutting the engine at 14mph if it considers this wise.
I eventually prod my way through some sub menus far enough to find a way to switch the virtual rabbit murderer off, and set about trying to convert the A7 into a car I’m in charge of. I eventually get about halfway there, I’d say. As an example, the lane-departure warning switches itself back on every time you restart the engine. It really knows best about departing lanes, so I decide to let it win that one. I fall out with the drivetrain, though. In a car which in many ways is so utterly focused on moving the game on, it is strange that the powertrain feels like a regression. For a decade Audi diesels have been leaders in the field, but this one is an oddity.
For your information and clarification, it’s the 50 TDI, which in the old days would have been a 3.0-litre V6 TDI, but unlike the old days where you could be guaranteed a wave of insistent, consistent torque to spirit the car along, now propulsion comes4
in the form of either feast or famine. Whatever gear you’re in, below about 2000rpm results are desultory. The whole car feels monstrously hungover. Above 2000rpm it leaps into tantrummy life, throwing all 50 things at you at once with a roar, splatter and heave of its nose. When all 50 whatsits are deployed it is pretty quick, but the progression from zero to 50-something lacks any finesse whatsoever.
And then there’s the gearbox, a torque converter tiptronic rather than dual clutch because of the diesel’s torque output. It will do nothing, then drop two gears if your right big toe even thinks about flexing. Put all this together and you have a drivetrain that is dull, manic, snarky and placid pretty much all at the same time. How it has come to this is rather hard to say. Not since Audi embarked on those CVT misadventures in the early 2000s has it got it so weirdly wrong. Stressed executives need cars that will relax them on the drive back from firing all those people, not infuriate them.
But this is the dichotomous nature of the A7 throughout. There’s the ride on the air suspension and 20-inch wheels, which is niggly over small stuff, yet composed over bigger undulations, while the steering weight varies from shopping-trolley light to barge heavy in the blink of an eye. The steering in the Maserati has no such problems, having two settings, heavy and bloody heavy, managed by a wheel of such impressive, softly leathered
The Maserati’s steering has two settings: heavy and bloody heavy
girth that turning the big Italian is a hairy-chested macho pursuit, like sheep shearing or tree felling.
I feel rather apologetic starting the 3.0-litre V6 in the Maserati when anyone’s within earshot, because anyone unaware that it’s a diesel will be waiting for a Ferrari-bred bark to shatter the silence but then quickly horrified by the noise of percussively squeezed heavy oil. The proverbial diesel damp squib. But then as it gets up to speed, things improve markedly, especially in Sport mode, when the big Maser gets a lovely deep throb on. A diesel engine that is genuinely enjoyable to listen to through its four lovely exhaust pipes – what a very clever trick. And while the Quattroporte is not as fast as the other two, it can still get a move on, and it has mighty brakes.
The Quattroporte works its rear Pirelli P Zeros very hard, the grunt from the big diesel, the length of the car and the consequent shifting centre of balance placing a lot of demands on traction at speed. It does need to be in Sport mode with the stiffer dampers enabled too, otherwise it can feel like a more nimble S-Class, which is no bad thing.
Over in the CLS, no such Maserati aural treat awaits. Arkwright’s Spinning Jenny was less clackety but at least from the inside the CLS is well soundproofed and, as it builds speed, the noise becomes a level drone rather than a dysfunctional roar. And anyway, you won’t be bothered about the noise because you will be too busy holding on for dear life.
The new 400d is an engine of remarkable muscle. I go up a few steep hills and it makes no difference to the rate of acceleration, which ranges from brutal to beastly, whatever gradient it’s presented with. Even going slowly, you go everywhere quickly, reaching corners a few mph quicker than you mean to, because the CLS surfs on an unending breaker of torque, shifting seamlessly between gears.
Mind you, the explosive power of the Merc has to be managed, and in Sport Plus mode with traction control reduced it can be very lively as fronts and rears slide about. In other modes it will get into understeer fairly quickly if you overdo it. But the steering is far more communicative and precise than the other two, and with that mighty motor too, it will leave the other two well behind in no time.
The Audi’s engine comes to life once you get through the midrange muddle and push it hard, and the gearbox makes its mind up too, but the A7 suffers from a lot of bodyroll through corners and you can feel the four-wheel steering chattering away at the both ends to keep you on a consistent arc.
It’s incredibly tech-laden, the Audi, but you get the sense that some very, very clever people have been locked in rooms for many years dreaming up all manner of gadgets and gizmos they4
would love. But they didn’t ask normal people what they wanted. As an example, you can change the brightness of the blind-spot warning lights. Why do we need this much choice? The whole thing is mind-boggling.
The Audi’s beautiful touchscreens soon become hard work, as you try in vain to find the correct level of finger pressure needed to provoke the graphics to buzz in response and do your bidding. It’s somewhere between poking a bloke in the chest to start a fight in a bar and stroking a mouse’s scrotum. But it’s not intuitive and doesn’t consistently feed back, and for this I am very sad because since I was a kid watching Logan’s Run and Space 1999 I’ve wanted car interiors to look like this – but now they do I’m harking back to the old days of plasticky buttons.
Like a lot of new tech, it has the initial delightfulness of discovery followed by the frustration of fact: excitedly asking Alexa to buy your train tickets and her playing Go your own way by Fleetwood Mac.
The cabin of the Quattroporte is also rather random, but in an entirely different way. It has one of the most sumptuously leathered and cushioned armrests this side of a Roller, the thick metal shifters are the shape of Gurkha knives, the roof is clad in soft suede and the carbonfibre frills are a delight to touch and look at. But then half the seats (the flat, hard uncomfortable bits) are made of hard-wearing fabric from a roofer’s trousers, while the chrome trim seems to have come from an ’80s ghetto blaster and the expensive-sounding Bowers & Wilkins sound system is hidden behind perfunctory grilles shaped like melted Toblerone.
After the wide open spaces of the other two, the CLS feels tiny, like a hot hatch. The seats are magnificent deep buckets, but comfortable too, while the steering wheel, which looks like a sad robot, is thick and grippy. While the wide infotainment screen isn’t particularly elegant or easy to operate, at least you can mooch around and get lost using the centre wheel and clicky mouse thing, which means more time looking at the road rather than performing piloting operations with your finger on the Audi’s touchscreen.
And while the silver wood may not be your thing, the air vents are objects of beauty, with their rotors and little LED ringlets. When this much time has been spent on air vents, you must expect great things of the rest of the car.
It doesn’t have as big a boot as the huge Audi, and nowhere near the limousine levels of rear legroom of the Quattroporte, and the cabin is beautifully finished but nothing that you might not have seen already in an E-Class, yet the CLS is a fabulous car in nearly every respect.
I really want to like the A7, because of the ambition of the thing, but it’s just not quite there in too many ways. Perhaps Audi will send it an upgrade via the internet and it will magically become the car it should be. I wouldn’t be surprised. The Quattroporte feels from a different age to the other two, and as always with a Maserati, is immensely likeable yet flawed. In spite of the futurism of the A7 and cool of the CLS, it was the Italian which got most of the attention.
Which, when you’ve binned your spreadsheet, is what these cars are all about: theatre. In which case the Maserati should win by default, but like that hefty raise you soon got used to having and spent, it’s not just about instant gratification but everyday business. And on almost every count the CLS is on a different level to the others.