Mercedes CLS Shooting Brake to go on sale here
Sleek wagon version arrives in the Middle East in November
By Shahzad Sheikh
The Mercedes CLS Shooting Brake was revealed earlier this summer at the Goodwood Festival of Speed, followed by an AMG version. If you must have an estate car or a ‘wagon’ this is the sexiest beast out there.
Seeing as these type of cars are not the biggest sellers in our region, we weren’t sure it was coming here.
But Mercedes has confirmed that it will come here in three different engine variants: the CLS 350 BlueEFFICIENCY producing 306bhp, CLS 500 BlueEFFICIENCY with a V8 biturbo engine producing 408bhp and the top of the range CLS 63 AMG Shooting Brake delivering 557bhp, all mated to the 7G-TRONIC PLUS automatic transmission.
The Shooting Brake is obviously very similar to the CLS saloon of ‘four-door coupe’ as Mercedes would have you say, that it is based on. But it’s more practical with a load volume of between 590 and 1550 litres.
There’s an automatically opening tailgate and standard air suspension to compensate for the load. Rear seats can be folded down from the cargo bay.
So what exactly is a Shooting Brake? Break, or the homonym Brake, was the name once given to carriages used to “break” in wild horses and also to restrict (or “brake”) their urge to move, so that they could be put to use as work horses. Since the carts could easily be broken as part of this process, people tended not to use ones which they may have urgently needed for other purposes.
Where necessary, “Brakes” were often fitted out with variable bodies, which were only really used to carry along anything that may have been necessary for the hunt, for example. Any such vehicle which was used when going out shooting was called a Shooting Brake or Shooting Break.
Motorised Shooting Brakes were popular in England in the 60s and 70s – exclusive two-door sports cars, which combined the luxury and style of a coupé with a larger load compartment and large tailgate.
According to CEO Dr. Dieter Zetsche: “Any memorable machine is equal parts art and science. A car has to first deliver in function – the ticket of entry – and then in fascination: the ticket to real excitement. The CLS Shooting Brake excels on both accounts – unlike any other car in the market”.
“The CLS Shooting Brake is based on the great tradition of stylish sportiness which has always characterised Mercedes, and takes these unique icons an exciting step further”, explains Gorden Wagener, Head of Design at Mercedes‑Benz. “It stands for the enhanced design idiom of Mercedes-Benz which is oriented towards aesthetic, avant-garde principles”.
