Mercedes CLS250 CDI (2012)

Welcome to our new Mercedes-Benz CLS 250 CDI long-termer - 30 January 2012

Welcome to the new luxury. The Mercedes-Benz CLS250 CDI is an elite car for humbler times. It’s a coupe that offers each occupant a door, rather than making rear-seat passengers feel like second-class citizens, and is powered by a small, efficient, clean diesel engine when for a century big Benz coupes have had big benzin engines. Cars like this just didn’t exist when I started doing this job a decade ago. You can still have a V8-powered CLS if you want one. But when and where can you use it? Benz thinks lots of us will like the idea of an elegant, luxurious car with just-sufficient power, a longer range, lower running costs and less guilt. And I’m going to spend the next year finding out how appealing this new niche-niche is.

Seems the new luxury comes at an old-fashioned price. Our CLS Sport costs £49,355 before options and £58,055 after, which must be some sort of record for a 2143cc, 204bhp diesel four. I didn’t specify this car myself and if I had, I’d have been pretty happy with the kit that comes as standard. The ‘basic’ car has leather, 18s, bi-xenons, sat-nav, a digital radio, parking sensors and self-parking; for another three grand the Sport trim adds 19s, LED lights and sportier styling, suspension, transmission and brakes.

So when the CLS comes pretty fully laden, how did we end up with a car costing nearly nine grand more? Most of that has gone on seats and trim: three grand on a ‘luxury package’ that extends the leather around the cabin and improves its quality, and adds an Alcantara headlining and ‘ambient’ cabin lighting with three changeable hues. Adding three memory positions and four-way lumbar support to the already electric seats adds £715 to the bill, and the ‘dynamic’ seats that offer massage, more adjustment and active bracing through corners add £1310. There’s a grand for a glass sunroof, £950 for an upgraded hard-drive sat-nav with a bigger screen, and £650 for a better, 14-speaker Harman Kardon hi-fi. All very nice, and together they provide a Bentley-esque cabin atmosphere now even more at odds with the humble motor out front. But all very pricey: I’ll make sure I spend some time in a ‘standard’ CLS to see if it really feels nine grand less special.

I’d definitely have chosen the £445 folding rear seats and £350 heated front seats myself, and the £295 Speed Limit Assist, which uses a front-facing camera to spot speed-limit signs you might have missed, will be interesting to test. But I don’t think I’d have chosen the colour. The car has just been delivered, but the Cuprite Brown is not endearing itself to me. Cuprinol Brown might be a better name. A brave design like the CLS doesn’t need a brave colour, and Merc makes it easy to make your CLS look sensational. There are four greys and silvers that flatter the lines, and if you want to be bold the aubergine or porcelain leather options look amazing.

Mine, however, is brown. I’m not going to criticise a car for something so easily changed, and the man at Merc insists brown is the new white. But for now the CLS looks less like the new luxury than the transport of a prosperous, solid, small-town West German pork butcher circa 1975. It’s a very different picture inside though, and when I get to the end of the 1000-mile running-in period I hope I’ll find it doesn’t drive like a brown ’70s diesel Merc four-door. Actually, wasn’t James Hunt’s famously bricked-up ’70s Merc 450SEL 6.9 brown too? I’m feeling better about mine already.