4car.co.uk CLK write up inside

[Maff]

From 4car.co.uk motoring magazine (part of the C4 TV programme)... Mercedes-Benz CLK Is this a first in the annals of niche marketing? There are now not one but two Mercedes C-class coupés, because the hatchback Sports Coupé has just been joined by the more upmarket CLK. It proves the lengths Mercedes has gone to in order not to base a new coupé on the E-class, which would have been named ELK, a combination of letters with an unfortunate resonance for the Stuttgart firm - it was a Swedish elk avoidance test, you may recall, that caused the A-class to trip and fall. Mercedes-Benz has distanced the CLK from its relatives, though, with a unique interior featuring round facia vents, better-quality materials, and seatbelts which are automatically handed to you by an extending arm as in several past Mercedes coupés. The doors are frameless, there's no centre pillar so you can have completely open sides by retracting front and rear side windows, and top models will have V8 power denied to lesser C-class cars. The previous CLK had the mainstream Mercedes front grille, but this one has the slimmer air intake, with the three-pointed star in its centre, reserved for sporty Mercs. But it's not quite the same as the Sports Coupé's, lacking the thicker chrome bars above and below. The tail is very like the new E-class's, the roofline resembles the larger CL's, and the wedge profile is a calmer version of the Sports Coupé's with, here, a flattening-off of the waistline as it heads rearwards. The model range is complex. It includes a CLK 270 CDI, but otherwise it's all petrol engines including the CLK 500 and CLK 55 AMG V8s, the latter with 367bhp, and the V6-engined CLK 240 and 320. Again there's a CLK 200 Kompressor, but this time its engine is from a new Mercedes four-cylinder family which will also appear in other C-class models and the new E-class. There's also a direct-injection version, the CLK 200 GCI. Both are all-aluminium engines designed specifically for supercharging, with variable valve timing for both camshafts, a pair of balancer shafts and - confusingly, given the CLK 200 name - a 1796cc capacity. The standard version delivers 163bhp, the CGI (stratified Charge Gasoline Injection) unit boosts that to 170bhp, has higher peak torque developed at a lower speed, and uses 16 percent less fuel on the combined test cycle. How much of a fuel saving there'll be in real-world conditions remains to be seen. European sales start in May, extending to the UK a few months later.

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