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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General notes
The Driving Assistance package is only
available on vehicles with HYBRID.
The Driving Assistance package consists of
DISTRONIC PLUS, Blind Spot
Assist and Lane Keeping Assist. ...
DISTRONIC displays in themultifunction display
► Press the
button to select the
DISTRONIC menu.
Display when DISTRONIC is deactivated
When DISTRONIC is deactivated, you will see
the following in the multifunction display:
1 Vehicle ...
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