Mercedes Benz CLS 500 Review

Mercedes Benz CLS Class

Ease of Use

The Mercedes-Benz CLS is a four seat coupe with four doors, front seat passengers will find themselves comfortably catered for, with good legroom and headroom. Rear passengers are not so lucky as headroom is best described as adequate but the legroom is not so forgiving.

The front dynamic seats have 3 stage heating and ventilation - they are electrically powered for pin point adjustment with a memory function, which memorises the head restraints, interior mirrors and the steering wheel position.

You sit quite low in the car, much lower than the E-Class that the CLS is based upon. I would say the optional (£605) Parktronic (PTS) needs consideration as rear vision can be a little difficult. PTS operates on the principle of an echo-sounder, which sailors use to test the depth of water. Six sensors on the front bumper and four on the rear bumper send out ultrasonic signals which are reflected by other vehicles or obstacles. Using the time difference between sending and receiving, a microprocessor calculates the distance and informs the driver by means of a visual and/or acoustic signal.

We particularly liked the Active Lighting System an option at £1085 which adds Bi-Xenon headlights with cornering lighting. This system allows the headlamps to track the steering movements made by the driver, pivoting the beam to match the direction of travel around a bend. It does take a while to get used to the movement of the lights, but once you are it works very well to improve vision around bends. At speeds below 25 mph the system utilizes the front fog lamps to help illuminate the inside of the corner when indicating or turning the steering wheel. Bi-Xenon headlights are very powerful and offer much better vision at night and during rain. The lights automatically come on at dusk and when entering underground car parks or tunnels. The windscreen wipers are rain sensitive therefore require little human interaction.

We wish that Mercedes-Benz would drop the terrible foot/hand operated parking brake, we don’t like it and would prefer to see an electronic parking brake as seen on the Land Rover Discovery 3 and Jaguar S-Type, etc. You need to watch the boot lid which can be remotely opened from the key fob; it flips up very quickly and could hit you on the chin.

The boot can swallow 495 litres (VDA) of luggage (540 litres in an E-Class/505 litres in the 350 CLS) which should be enough for a family of four on a touring holiday. The only draw back of a coupe is that the boot aperture is quite small, which made it very hard for our pram to fit in, without taking the wheels off.