| First Drive | London/Goodwood, England | Mercedes-Benz CLS 63 AMG S 4Matic Shooting Brake |
Key Facts
Model tested: Mercedes-Benz CLS 63 AMG S 4Matic Shooting Brake
Pricing: not officially on sale in the UK
Engine: 5.5-litre twin-turbo V8 petrol
Transmission: four-wheel drive, seven-speed automatic
Body style: five-door estate
Rivals: Audi A7 Sportback, BMW 6 Series Gran Coupé, Jaguar XF Sports Brake
CO2 emissions: 243g/km
Combined economy: 26.6mpg
Top speed: 155mph
0-62mph: 3.7 seconds
Power: 585hp at 5,500rpm
Torque: 800Nm at 2,000- to 4,500rpm
In the Metal: 
There has never been anything much wrong with the way the CLS looks - frankly, it's gorgeous and you'd be hard pressed to find too many ways to go about improving it. In fact, that's basically what Mercedes has said too, with one PR spokesperson saying "there wasn't much we could do to improve it so we didn't do much." There are some changes to the outside though - a broader, sportier-looking grille that looks more like the front of the smaller CLA, new bumpers and air intakes and new lights. Those lights are now clever full LED units and we'll talk more about them below.
This being the AMG version, it rides on chunky 19-inch alloys, and has a beefier, more aggressive stance than the standard CLS - an effect magnified by the extra swoops of the Shooting Brake body style. If you're going to have a CLS, this is definitely how you want it to look.
Inside, there are some detail changes, the most obvious of which is the new iPad-style central infotainment screen. It looks just as incongruous in the CLS as it does in the CLA, A-Class and C-Class, but at least it's a proper widescreen display now and the Comand system that controls it is as intuitive and sensibly laid out as ever. The cabin is topped off with sumptuous seats, decent space in the rear if you're carrying passengers and some new leather trim options that include a rather garish mixture of black and light tan. You're probably best advised to keep the cabin colour schemes understated, to be honest.
Driving it:
Well, it's quick. The S-Model AMG-built 5.5-litre twin-turbo V8 engine has climbed 28hp to a whopping 585hp in this version, with 800Nm of torque being fired to all four wheels by the seven-speed automatic gearbox. All four? Yes, because our left-hand drive German registered test car was a 4Matic model, a rival to Audi's quattro and BMW's xDrive. There's a catch though; if you want the steering wheel on right, you can't have all-wheel drive. There are too many mechanical issues for it to be worth Mercedes' financial while doing the conversion apparently.
Which is a real shame, as it tipped down with rain on a couple of stages of our test route, and yet the 585hp CLS 63 remained resolutely un-flapped. It has terrific steering, with bags of feel feeding through to that small, Alcantara-wrapped rim, and the handling balance is superb. It perhaps lacks the last nth-degree of adjustability of the BMW M5, but the power delivery is much better - the M5 frequently feels too sudden, too snappy in its throttle response. The CLS 63 is far more progressive and controllable, and that goes for the rear-drive version too.
Of course, all that is happening while you leave a sonic trail of the most brilliant, down-and-dirty V8 noise behind you. Revving the AMG V8 hard makes a noise like God tearing telephone directories in half and it becomes utterly addictive to flip down a gear or two to amplify the racket, even if all you're doing is making a left turn at relatively sedate speeds. Your neighbours won't like the dramatic rev-flare on start-up either, especially if you're a habitual early starter.
As with all AMG models, you can flip between Comfort, Sport and Sport+ modes on the gearbox, suspension and engine, but the best compromise, certainly on the tight and twisty roads of the Sussex Downs on the way to the Goodwood Festival Of Speed, was to have the suspension in Comfort, the gearbox in Sport and the engine in Sport+.
The rest of the Mercedes-Benz CLS line-up:
The most significant new addition to the updated CLS line-up is a new entry-level CLS 220 CDI model, using the 170hp, 400Nm version of Mercedes' long-serving 2.1-litre four-cylinder turbodiesel engine. It's got enough grunt to keep out of its own way, and its potential for 60mpg and a 129g/km CO
2 rating mean you could potentially have a car that looks as good as the howling AMG, but buy it and run it for a fraction of the price. The four-pot diesel is still a touch noisy though, growling noticeably at times so you may feel the need to trade up to the CLS 350 CDI instead, powered by the 258hp, 620Nm 3.0-litre V6 diesel. That model has seen its CO
2 emissions fall by 18- to 142g/km thanks to a new nine-speed 9G-Tronic automatic gearbox. The same size as the old 7G-Tronic unit, and actually slightly lighter, the 9G-Tronic is making its debut in the CLS and will shortly spread out to the rest of the Mercedes range. If it's petrol you want, there is also a new CLS 400 model featuring a new 3.5-litre turbocharged V6 petrol engine that records a pretty impressive mix of 333hp, 480Nm, 38mpg and 170g/km.
Worth Noting
Mercedes is particularly proud of the CLS' new LED headlights, even going so far as to lay on a night time test for us to sample their prowess. A total of 36 individual LEDs are split between three different modules providing high-and-low beam and cornering lights. According to Mercedes, they can throw a high beam out to 485 metres ahead of the car, around 100 metres further than a conventional Xenon light. With the high beam unit of 24 LEDs set in a grid formation, it can also 'blank' out individual sections of the high-beam throw to avoid dazzling other drivers, and can react in as little as 10 milliseconds. The stereo camera mounted in the windscreen can detect when a corner is coming up and adjust the beam to peer into it before you've turned the steering wheel and, as a final act of clever-tech, the lights are also tied into the satnav system and can tell when a roundabout is coming up, and adjust the beam and cornering lights accordingly.
It's all clever stuff, but with Audi and BMW showing off laser headlight technology recently, has Mercedes fallen back in the visibility arms race? Not so, according to Gunther Fischer, Merc's lighting tech guru. "Laser is good for one specific application - high beam" he told us. "But with this full-LED system we can offer greater flexibility and adaptability, and at a lower cost and greater benefit to the customer. It's difficult to put a price on it, but I would say that we can make an entire LED headlamp unit for the same price as just one laser light element.
"Of course we are working on laser technology, and we will introduce it but only when we feel it gives real benefit to the customer. We will develop it for specific applications, such as picking out the edge of the road in heavy fog."
Summary
It's such as shame that the 4Matic version of the CLS 63 AMG won't be made in right-hand drive, because it turns what's already a pretty dramatic road-weapon into a true multi-role device. It's fabulous. As for the rest of the Mercedes-Benz CLS range, this round of subtle updates keeps it at the head of the four-door coupé pack.
