Dashing Merc gets a diesel engine
New baseline CLS is a fuel sipper but still packs a decent wallop
ERCEDES-BENZ South Africa (MBSA) couldn’t have chosen a better time to introduce their new CLS 250 CDI, which they say now completes their local CLS model range.
For a start, last week’s horrific fuel price hikes are still indelibly printed on many motorists’ minds – and there’s worse to come.
Secondly, the diesel passenger car market in SA is growing as more motorists are realising that diesels are better than hybrids at saving fuel.
Finally, motor manufacturers are under pressure from the “greenies” to reduce their carbon emissions, so introducing the bottom-ofthe-range 250 CDI, which produces 134g/km, goes a long way to scoring Brownie points for the Stuttgart motor maker.
The CLS, the pioneer of the genre we now call the four-door coupé, has always been one of Mercedes’ most controversial models. Diehard conservative fans of the three-pointed-star consider it too flashy and flamboyant but, since its introduction, 170 000 customers around the world have whipped out their chequebooks and parked one in the garage. And their overwhelming reason for buying? – the aesthetics.
But would you want to buy something as sleek and sexy as the CLS with a four-pot 2.2-litre turbodiesel engine? Surely something that small isn’t really suitable for a car the CLS’ size?
Well, we got a chance to find out at the car’s Gauteng launch last week, held in howling rain and hail storms that really put the test into test driving. And what we found is that, if you want a CLS, you’d be daft to buy anything other than a 250 CDI, unless you’ve got too much money or an ego that demands to be seen in the AMG 63 version.
Despite the 250 nomenclature the engine is a 2.2-litre, four-cylin-
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