Gadgetory

this is Mercedes second generation of their four-door coupe it remains a statement car this is also somewhat practical let's drive the 2012 CLS 550 and check the tech let's put the cls550 in its place within the Mercedes model range it's a four-door coupe of biggish executive kind of presence it's very eClass in its presentation in person it's nowhere near s-class in size or pomposity now don't confuse this eClass based CLS with the s-class base CL which is a true coupe it's got two doors if you can't count doors very well then just count the dollars forty-three thousand of them separate the two models now a CLS is kind of a high tone thing so a lot of tech comes in it base for example this navigation system is standard on this car I would hope so at this price level however it's not that big a screen in Mercedes fashion it's not touchscreen obviously they use their command controller which is down here with a back a clear and then a multi-function knob to do things if you want to enter an address it's pretty straightforward although they've got this multi ribbon thing that I've never gotten totally in love with top ribbon middle ribbon bottom ribbon so let's try the voice controls enter destination pre-selected state is California do you want to enter town first or street first town please say uh California town name two things I want you to notice from that short little sample one you don't get these annoying little beeps you have to wait for secondly notice that I didn't have to say exactly what the command was on the screen where the system falls down though is dealing with voice and the phone system on certain things like when you're trying to call up someone on the phone book call name please say the name Mitchell Chang think Jim excepted mobile dialing who the hell think Jim Oh it's Jim think you know Mitch Chang Jim Fink so that didn't even come close here's your other option redoubt phonebook please say the name from which reading out should begin Mitchell Chang homestead rich who homestead Tina you see what it's doing there it's reading the directories from the name that I gave it two problems one it got the name completely wrong - I can't tell what it's reading me first last last first and if there's only one or the other I don't know where it is in the sequence am/fm HD radio satellite radio bluetooth streaming with good metadata a six disc slot with movie playback and 10 gigabytes of hard drive space all are standard in the entertainment rig and it's one choice only ipod connection however is optional all of it blares out of a one choice Harman Kardon system with 14 speakers and over 600 watts now in the dash you can see a whole lot of things that are part of the optional driving technology on this car let's take a look here's my distance readout for my pre-safe braking it's showing me where the car is spotting vehicles in front of me Blind Spot Assist on or off it uses indicators in the mirrors that as you see are way far out on the glass we get on the road I'll tell you what I think of those and here's your lane keep assistance training that on or off it's a stick shaker in case you're drifting across a lane and don't have the corresponding signal on now I'm a big fan of things that are built into a well designed in - interface but some things shouldn't be there like seat adjustments and Mercedes made you do that for the longest time now they're down here in my sensible set of switches alongside the seat bolster up here in the engine room you've got a big part of the CLS story a 550 as it says on the butt of this thing tells you it's five and a half liters right but no mercedes give up on that simple nomenclature years ago now it doesn't mean anything this is a 4.6 liter twin-turbo v8 you can tell by the plumbing up here right away we've got two turbos you can spot those down here and one over there that gives this car 402 horsepower and again because it's blown it gets 443 foot-pounds of torque gets this 4200 pound beast up to 60 in just a tick over five seconds and delivers 1624 mpg which is not only pretty good for a big fast car but quite a bit better than the last edition of this big fast car this car is powerful it's not responsive tons of horsepower lots of torque but the throttle on this car is basically a light switch on or off you cannot make any decent maneuvers in traffic without this you're going back and forth all the time because the power comes out like that and then it goes away like that it's a very hard car to drive smoothly which should not be the case for $70,000 on top of that you've got heavily assisted steering it's finger light and highly assisted brakes the three different drive modes here on the console if you go to sport mode that puts you in a really sporty mode it's almost impossible then not to snap your neck back and forth as the power comes on and goes away and the end mode of course drops you right to manual which I found was good I like using the manual shift on this automatic because this guy hunts seventh gear like a hound dog but unfortunately it's constantly driving to get into seventh gear which on this car in many situations is like a thousand rpm let's say the late departure technology is pretty good as you approach the center line you get the stick shake on the wheel like you're supposed to and it keeps doing it halfway into the next lane so hopefully that'll get your attention at some point if not you may have died behind the wheel who knows as for the blind spot tech it works great you know it's well calibrated but I find the indicators are too far out in the mirror if they were here in the post like a lot of other cars who shall go unnamed they get my attention a lot more rapidly in some it accomplishes what a big dollar Mercedes is supposed to do a big quiet huge power ride that has a presence but this is not the kind of car you get a grin from driving you get a grin from me singing it now when you're done driving a car was so little Road feel you may as well have it park itself the automatic parking is excellent you approach a spot with your signal on put the car in reverse when the blue parking icon points at the spot work the pedals gradually while the car does the backing in and steering then pop it in drive and let the car nibble that last bit to straighten itself out tidy okay let's price this 2012 CLS 550 at 72 to base lots of tech is in there you're going to get the navigation Harman Kardon audio most of the interesting digital inputs but you got to add a few things there's a premium one package for forty four hundred bucks and that guy brings you iPod and aux rear-view camera which ought to be stuck adaptive all LED front lights keyless go bunch of other niceties a chunky package but lots in there for twenty nine hundred you can get the driver assistance that's the adaptive cruise the automatic braking the blind spot stuff and the Lane Departure warnings and the last thing you want to think about is the parking technology front and rear sensors and the parking assist logic that's a little under a grand but if you need it you know who you are