SA Road Tests

Welcome

This is the home of automobile road tests in South Africa. We drive South African cars, SUVs and LCVs under South African conditions. It also just happens that most of the vehicles we drive are world cars as well, so what you read here probably applies to the models you can get at home.

*To read one of our archived road tests, just select from the alphabetical menu of manufacturers' names on the left. Hover your cursor over the manufacturer's name, then choose from the drop-down menu that appears.

*Please remember too, that prices quoted were those ruling on the days I wrote the reports.


We shoehorn ourselves into a 2014 Mercedes-Benz CLA 180

Petite and potent

Edited version published in Witness Wheels on Thursday February 13, 2014

It’s an interesting idea: Mount a scaled-down CLS body on an A-Class platform and call it CLA. You end up with a petite four-door coupé that readers of German motoring magazine "auto, motor und sport" voted best new design product of 2013 in the compact car class. On the other hand, some rude persons of our acquaintance asked, “What the hell is that?” so opinions obviously differ.

As nice as the idea is, though, the devil is in the details – it was built for typical short, dark-haired Germans rather than equally typical tall, big-boned and fair-crowned “Aryans.” Your writer and a selection of friends could not get completely comfortable in it. Granted, its optional sunroof stole some headroom, but even with the driver’s chair adjusted all the way down, your scribe was left with only a thumb’s-width of space between scalp and hood lining. Getting into the back seat and out again was a mission best forgotten.

But enough whining; we need to look at this car from the point of view of potential buyers, so let’s do it justice. Provided you and your usual passengers are no more than about 1,70 metres tall, it’s a grand little car. Performance from our test unit, a base-model, 90-kW CLA 180 was brilliant. It accelerated well, its seven-speed twin-clutch automatic gearbox shifted intuitively, it hauled an indecently heavy load of passengers up hill and down dale without even breathing hard and its 470-litre boot swallowed a small mountain of luggage.

For those who need to know, CLAs are built at Mercedes-Benz’ A-Class manufacturing facility in Kecskemét (Ketch-ke-meet), a city of 114 000 people, in central Hungary. It’s available here with two versions of the 1600cc Mercedes-Benz M270 DE 16 petrol motor, a 2.1-litre diesel and an AMG45 version with twin-scroll turbocharged, 2.0-litre, M133 DE 20 engine. To make things more personal, a variety of trim lines, from decorative to sporty, are available as options.

Being a Mercedes, it has all the safety kit one would expect; seven airbags, ISOFix, collision prevention assist, pre-safe brake preloading, attention assist, anti-theft package, runflat tyres, child proof locks, an active bonnet for pedestrian protection and the usual braking and handling aids. Should you still manage to get yourself deeply in trouble, two new features will help to make things better. Plastic crash wedges fitted to the rear of the front wheel arches help to ensure that wheels do not slide under front doors after a high-impact crash, irrespective of turning angles. This means it would be possible to re-open said portals after a serious accident.

The second, Mercedes-Benz Automatic Emergency Call, alerts emergency services in the event of a serious accident. After the airbags or the pyrotechnical belt tensioners are triggered, the vehicle's exact GPS position and vehicle identification number (VIN) are sent electronically to a special emergency centre, even if occupants are unconscious or unsure of where they are. The call can also be made manually, as "MB emergency call" is always the first entry in the system ‘phone directory. All you have to do is first, have the optional COMAND Online music/satnav/communications system fitted and second, keep your smartphone connected while driving.

Its boot lid pops open in response to a command from the key fob or after pulling a switch on the driver’s door. The sill is at mid-thigh height and it’s about 16 centimetres deep. Although the boot is neat and square, its loading aperture follows the shape of the lid that curves around the stylish tail lamps. A pair of netted side bays, four lashing rings, a light and a 12-Volt socket make loading a breeze. As mentioned previously, the tyres are runflats, hence no spare.

Seat backs split 60:40 and fold almost flat provided the front chairs aren’t adjusted too far back. There is no centre armrest (it’s optional) but three belts and head restraints are fitted. Netted seatback pockets and small door bins look after storage needs while smokers have an ashtray and lighter at the back of the centre console. USB and auxiliary sockets can be found in the console storage box and there is an SD card slot in the face of the COMAND music centre.

The standard climate control system lets you preselect temperature and ventilation options, but it’s a single channel device only. Storage for personal items is provided by a pair of cup holders, small door bins and a medium sized glove compartment. We felt that fit and finish wasn’t up to the usual Mercedes-Benz standard with noticeable gaps between door pads and “B” pillars, crooked window rubbers and unequal spaces between dash trims and doors. We hope this wasn’t representative of all cars from the Hungarian plant.

On balance, while we agree that the CLA is a great little car, we fully grown persons would probably be happier with a regular A-Class.

Test car from MBSA press fleet

See the launch report on the MY2020 update here

The numbers
Basic price with automatic transmission and carbon tax: R366 826
Engine: 1595cc, 16-valve, four-cylinder, turbopetrol
Power: 90 kW at 5000 rpm
Torque: 200 Nm between 1250 and 4000 rpm
Zero to 100 km/h: 9,3 seconds
Maximum speed: 210 km/h
Real life fuel economy: About 8,5 l/100 km
Tank: 50 litres
Warranty and maintenance: 6 years/100 000 km

What We Do

This is a one-man show, which means that every car reviewed is given my personal evaluation and receives my own seat of the pants judgement - no second hand input here.
Every test car goes through real world driving; on city streets littered with potholes, speed bumps and rumble strips, on freeways and if its profile demands, dirt roads as well.

I do my best to include relevant information like real life fuel economy or a close mathematical calculation, boot size or luggage space, whether the space is both usable and accessible, whether life-sized people can use the back seat (where that applies), basic specs of the vehicle and performance figures if they are published. In the case of clearly identified launch reports, fuel figures are of necessity the laboratory numbers provided with the release material. If I ever place an article that doesn't cover most things, it's probably because I have dealt with that vehicle at least once already, so you will be able to find what you want in another report under the same manufacturer's heading in the menu on the left.

My reviews and launch reports appear on Thursdays in the Wheels supplement to The Witness, South Africa's oldest continuously running newspaper, and occasionally on Saturdays in Weekend Witness as well. I drive eight to ten vehicles each month, most months of the year (except over the festive season) so not everything gets published in the paper. Those that are, get a tagline but the rest is virgin, unpublished and unedited by the political-correctness police.

Hope you like what you see, because there are no commercial interests at work here. As quite a few readers have found, I answer every serious enquiry from my home email address, with my phone numbers attached, so they can see I do actually exist.



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