2009 Mercedes-Benz CL-Class Review
Sometimes, being the only car of a particular type or price can put you in a lonely place — lonely enough that automakers usually avoid it, preferring to make their own copy of what everyone else is selling, and pricing it to match. The Mercedes-Benz CL-Class is an exception, an exclusive car in a couple of ways. For one thing, it's a large coupe, and that's a rare animal. In some ways it compares with the BMW 6 Series and the Jaguar XK coupe, but it's larger and starts around $30,000 higher than those models. At $107,900, it has the highest base price and lowest sales numbers of any Mercedes — except the $495,000 SLR McLaren, which is an animal rare enough to be extinct after the 2009 model year. All in all, being a lone wolf seems to be working out just fine for the CL-Class.
To oversimplify, the CL-Class is a two-door version of Mercedes' S-Class full-size sedan. Arguably, anyone who wants the best of both worlds can opt for the CLS-Class, which has four doors and the lines of a coupe, but Mercedes says that car's smaller size and lower price appeal to different buyers altogether. See them compared here.
The CL-Class comprises the CL550, the CL600 and two high-performance AMG models, the CL63 and CL65. The CL550 is the only version that sticks to a naming convention Mercedes once followed pretty closely: 550 stands for the CL550's 5.5-liter V-8 engine. After that, everything unravels: The CL600 has a turbocharged 5.5-liter V-12, the CL63 has a 6.2-liter V-8, and the CL65 has a turbocharged 6.0-liter V-12. I tested the CL550.
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Parking position for the exteriormirror on the front-passenger side
Setting and storing the parking position
You can position the front-passenger side
exterior mirror in such a way that you can see
the rear wheel on that side as soon as you
engage reverse gear. Yo ...
THERMOTRONIC climate control with three individual climate modes
The second-generation Mercedes CLS can be optionally fitted with an automatic
climate control system which not only allows individual temperatures to be set
for three zones - for the driver, the f ...
Proper use
WARNING
There are various warning stickers affixed to
your vehicle. Their purpose is to alert you and
others to various dangers. Therefore, do not
remove any warning stickers unless the
sti ...