2014 Mercedes-Benz CLA250: Motoramic Drives

For the first time, the United States has overtaken Germany as Mercedes-Benz’s biggest market, which means America is becoming ever more important to the world’s oldest automaker. Yet the Supersize Me phenomenon of expanding girth common to fast-food burgers and automobiles alike has created a void below Mercedes-Benz’ entry level C-Class — one now filled with the CLA250.

And Benz is banking on the CLA to become the affordable temptress that will woo young buyers into its otherwise out-priced lair. Crucially, it is performing this seduction first and foremost via design. 


Consider a quartet of design choices: the upright grill, a windscreen that is pushed back 4-5 inches creating a longer hood, a raked A-pillar leading to an avant-garde coupé-like roofline, and the implementation of Mercedes’ “dropping line” — a crease that starts at the headlights and then swoops back and down towards the rear wheels. The dropping line was first introduced in the CLS and is making its way through the entire stable. “It’s kind of like the signature in every great painting, in every Mercedes you will see the dropping line,” explains Mercedes-Benz Head of Design Gorden Wagener.

The look hides the bulky front-wheel-drive architecture around the front axle, giving the CLA a much more brutish look. As the CLA is the first front-wheel-drive car Benz will ever sell in America (not counting the ultra rare F-Cell B-Class only leased in California), Mercedes didn’t want to pull a Maker’s Mark and water down its reputation.

“It was an active decision to move away from the ‘wedge’ design of the 90s, which we see as kind of old-fashioned, and transform it into a more streamlined 1930’s Art Deco design,” explains Wagener.