Needless to say, the CLA gets a pair of discs each at the front and rear along with the usual plethora of electronic assists – ABS, ESP, acceleration and skid control (ASR), brake drying and priming and hill start assist. To boot, Merc have also picked up a version of their Kinetic Energy Recovery System (yes, the famed KERS from F1) and plonked it in the CLA. In the CLA-Class, however, the system recharges the battery and should result in improved fuel efficiency according to Mercedes. And speaking of fuel efficiency, the CLA should return some very good fuel economy figures, having spent no less than 2,30,000 hours in the wind tunnel to come back with a drag coefficient of just 0.25! Coming back to the brakes, they do a pretty good job of providing adequate bite and progression to keep things from getting hairy.
CLA 200 CDI
Of course, Mercedes will be offering both petrol and diesel options for Indian buyers but we all know which of these will be the bread-and-butter version. Naturally, we were happy to get behind the wheel of the CLA 200 CDI first. The diesel version of the CLA gets the same 2,143-cc in-line four-cylinder turbocharged oil burner as the GLA. Between 3,600 and 4,400 revs the engine puts out 136 PS with peak torque of 300 Nm kicking in at 1,600 RPM and staying all the way through to 3,000 RPM. Transmission is via a seven-speed dual-clutch transmission that Merc say is “lightning fast”.
The diesel unit is noisy and starts with an energetic whirr before settling into a pacey crackle. It’s a torquey unit that works really well at all sorts of speeds, provided you don’t want to get very racy with the diesel CLA. There are some vibrations also that creep in through the floor-board, mild but detectable. Power delivery is linear and makes for easy driving, thanks to those healthy torque levels. The diesel unit, however, can’t be described as exciting as it seems to run out of breath when you want to really give the CLA 200 CDI the stick. Gear shifts happen fairly quickly but on the drive in Goa I did feel that the competition may still be one up on the three-pointed star in this aspect. Fortunately for Merc, the speed of gear shifts is something only auto journalists will crib about and will probably have no impact on their sales chart. They did after all post an all-time high of 10,201 units sold in India in 2014.
Overall, the CLA is a good product and it would be fair to say that Mercedes have got off to a great start to 2015. With 14 more products lined up for the year, things look rosy for the company from where we are now. However, coming back to the CLA will still have its work cut out against the competition, mostly for lack of room at the rear and for refinement in its diesel mill. As for the rest, well, it is a Merc and the three-pointed star it wears on its grille is well earned.
