Gadgetory

now the big story in luxury cars these days is small take a look at BMW to refresh to is from Lexus this CLA from Mercedes and the nice thing about working the other end of the market that you're also working a younger part of the market and they will be your s-class buyers of tomorrow and this car is part of what helped push Mercedes back to the top because we closed out 2013 and they'd like to stay there the overall lines are not so much derived from the c-class it's one notch up brother but interestingly borrowed from the way upscale CLS you see this kind of droopy over arch across the top that's real CLS kind of stuff on the other hand they're very proud of this face they say this came right off the concept car on the Auto Show circuit and I gotta say it does look pretty hot and it was what we saw in concept form and then out back you've got these sort of aggressive faux vents on the corners of the rear bumper it all speaks to a younger ethic than most Benz cars now the front row cabin on this car is one of its strong points you get a good quality Mercedes feel in here and I think it's about the most modern looking cabin they've got which is good cuz this car aims toward a younger audience that doesn't want a lot of baroque at least I don't think and most importantly it's got the family steering wheel this is a big part of the identity of a car ditto for the head unit and this sort of pop-tart toaster look and display which is all in vogue right now as you see you've got the knob which is push kick and click and then you've got back and clear buttons on it simple streamlined and of course the German car so don't touch the screen doesn't do anything this is Mercedes current command system the navigation is hard drive based 80 gigabytes of hard drive data on there but they've also got 10 gigabytes set aside for media for you to put your collection on which you're never gonna do on this car we have Sirius satellite radio which also brings in traffic and whether that's optional by the way as you can see the audio display is good and rich good use of meta tags they do get truncated though and you do have album art in there let's take a look at some of the sources I am an FM with HD radio satellite radio as I mentioned is optional disc or six disc CD DVD that's an optional SD card no thank you there's that 10 gigabyte storage USB and in here I've got a media interface for an iPod which I had to use an adapter for because I've got a newer iPod Touch bluetooth calling and bluetooth streaming by the way our standard on this car which is a nice touch some cars still make you pay extra for the streaming part and then way over here under the globe you get the interesting connectivity things Mercedes apps streaming radio apps there's your serious weather and you can also enter the website URL you want to look at although not when you're driving and boy is this whole system dogs slow this needs to be sped up with I don't know what firmware changes connectivity optimisation this is tedious I'm also not a fan how internet radio lives over here separate from audio it's all audio guys put it all together that navigation system right there is optional interestingly so is rear view camera I find that kind of chintzy in a car that coughs 30-grand there are plenty that cost less they give it to you for free by the way if you've got an iPhone consider the $600 iPhone drive kit its dealer installed and does a different interface than you've seen here for social media streaming radio and Siri voice command now it's like with the drive control technology in this vehicle it doesn't have an adaptive suspension so there's no elaborate control for that here's your shifter its stalk base which is kind of funny dedi for a car that aims so young you know a lot of folks gonna wish they had a lever down here but look how much console space you'd give up so this is smart if not hip and of course you got paddles that go with it on the wheel down here is the Eco mode this defaults on if you select it off it defeats the auto start/stop technology which I'm okay with because even on this car as you're going to see it's a little crunchy and then down here is your last drive mode control sport manual efficiency the efficiency is the nearest thing to a normal mode the sport is obviously sport and the manual lets you hold your shifts without the car jumping back to its own logic now while some things like rear view camera are annoyingly optional some other things are not that are kind of nice the attention assist that figures out if you're drowsy and alerts you that standard on this car as is forward collision warning and pre braking technology it does not have automatic full braking to stop a collision at optional or standard levels last thing I want to show you in the cabin is the optional but I think rather impressive panoramic roof it's a pretty small roof so the glass panels money nor this by today's standards but it's way bigger than a classic moon roof or Sun roof and it opens up a small cabin nicely which is good because if you're in the back seat hating the person in the front who made you sit there at least that will help air things out now this is a CLA 250 which tells you almost nothing about its engine it's not a two and a half liter it's a two liter inline turbo four with direct injection in other words it plays all the hits of modern motor design but it gets real weird for Mercedes in a couple of ways first of all it's sitting sidesaddle it drives the front wheels their first front wheel drive car sold in the American market also going to be available though as an all-wheel drive variant but this is how it starts here are the numbers you've got two hundred eight horsepower 258 foot-pounds of torque because it's a twin scroll turbo it's real torquing 3,200 pounds or so gets up to 60 in about 6.9 seconds certainly respectable the mpg number is nice 26:38 you're getting into small Japanese car territory with that one and the transmissions interesting one choice only 7-speed dual-clutch automated manual one they develop in conjunction with this car as opposed to going out and buying it we'll find out if it was worth their effort now I've told you before when I get into our review card I don't look at the specs or even the room so I don't really know what the powertrain is when I got in this one I thought it was a diesel with an automatic here's why I thought it was a diesel because there's kind of a coarse engine note and there's that sort of turbo lag that turbo Diesel's of course are known for but then tons of torque after that I thought it was an automatic because the gearbox was so civilized and smooth it couldn't be anything else they did that tack and said oh god it's a gas engine look how high the RPM is for the redline so the fact that it felt like a diesel is not a compliment necessarily to a gas engine but the fact that this dual clutch transmission felt like a regular automatic is a high praise this mode switch down here when you're in economy the car's just too lazy it's buried under 7th gear all the time and the throttle response is like numb you go to sports now it's frantic it's like a coke addict it's just like hang on hang on finally the ride quality just isn't for Sadie's which may or may not be a good thing depending on your tastes you'll either hate how harsh it is or like the fact that it doesn't feel isolated from the road I think it's a little too much the former beyond that though all the other driving inputs are very pleasant I think steering is well rated and variably ratioed and when you do get on and shift it yourself power is great on the car you keep it in that sweet spot it's real nice okay let's price our CLA now you know the headline on this car under 30 grand well not by the time you had destination now you're pushing 31 but that's fair enough but here's where things really leave the land of 30 the options you need to go see that style start with that panoramic roof for 1500 the Premium Package for 2300 gets you automatic temp control heated seats that Harman Kardon audio iPod interface and things like that multimedia package 2300 more which includes rear camera and some other niceties that iPhone drive kit 600 bucks at the dealer driver assist brings you adaptive cruise and the passive blind spot and Lane technology another 2500 if you want semi-automatic parking nearly a grand for that and then if you want to activate all those apps we saw on the dash and have the embrace app on your phone so you can locate the car unlock the doors things like that that's about 450 a year in monthly fees you can even go as far as spending 40 bucks to get AMG door lock caps what all-n seen that style disguise north of 41 thousand dollars but still a very inexpensive Mercedes I would wait a model year or a heavy refreshed I think the ride quality needs one more pass on it maybe some of those drive profiles something in between II and sport please but there's no mistaking this is a Mercedes and that's a big part to them you