Have we reached peak screen yet? I think we have. No, I’m not talking about what smartphones and subsequent related inventions have done to both modern democracy and our collective attention spans, although there’s definitely a blog or two’s worth of content to dissect there.
No, I’m talking about the screens in our cars. We’re done with adding more of those right? It’s not just me, most of my colleagues, or pervasive public sentiment saying this either. Volkswagen’s design boss recently vowed to bring honest-to-god buttons back, saying what we’re all thinking, “It’s not a phone: it’s a car.” The design guy from Jaguar hates screens. J.D. Power also hates screens. Hyundai finds them stressful. Hell, even the chief design officer at Mercedes-Benz, Gorden Wagener, recently admitted that “screens are not luxury.”
As it turns out, Mr. Wagener knows his own products well because the new CLE300 is a car that shoots itself in its own Loro Piana-wearing foot with a pair of screens that not only aren’t that nice to use but also completely failed during this test. More on that later.
If you’re unfamiliar with the CLE, Mercedes says this new coupe is meant to replace and split the difference between the old C- and E-Class coupes. But it shares both the wheelbase and interior of the current C-Class sedan and not the E so you can probably figure out which one of those it’s really based upon. Either way, it proved to be a difficult car to love not because of its size or anything mechanical. Surprise! It’s the tech. The stupid tech.
At Least It Looks Good
Let’s start with some positives. One of the main reasons you get a car like this is the way it looks and in the flesh, the CLE is a nicely designed thing. It feels fancy going down the road, and its classic compact Merc-coupe shape does indeed tie it to those old C63s and CLK Blacks I spent my youth watching slide across the screen on Top Gear. Behind the wheel, the subtle bulges in the hood are visible as are the rear fender character lines in the mirrors, making you feel quite cool.
As a thing to look at, current Benz interiors are quite pretty too. The seats are very comfortable and I’m a sucker for the fact that they are white. Diffused, ambient lighting is configurable and used to a nice effect, and the general build quality is admirable.
Powered by a 2.0-liter turbocharged four-cylinder making 255 horsepower (a 48-volt mild hybrid system adds up to 23 hp), the CLE300 is an enjoyably stable, capable highway cruiser. Zero to 60 mph is done in 6.2 seconds, which isn’t AMG quick but feels adequately quick as a daily driver. Decent pickup is joined by decent handling balance, too, and there’s a pleasantly effortless smoothness with which it both corners and accelerates. Highway cruising is very much this car’s strength, able to sit at over 80 mph comfortably and happily. If that’s the only sort of driving you do, the CLE300 is one of those cars that leaves you more refreshed after a drive than you were before.
Unrefined Drive
The problems begin, however, when you get off the highway. CLE300’s mild-hybrid powertrain isn’t as seamless or smooth at low speeds as other mild hybrids of this ilk. It’s infuriatingly slow to start moving when you only release the brake at a stoplight or in stop-and-go traffic to the point where drivers used to EVs may be compelled to look for a “turn on creep” checkbox in the infotainment system. And once it does get going, the powertrain can at times be lurchy. Not what you want or expect from a $60,000 Mercedes-Benz of any vintage, let alone a brand new one with a hybrid system meant to smooth this exact sort of thing out.
The unintuitive brakes don’t help either. Like the C300 I tested over a year ago, the pedal is long with too little response at the top of half of travel but becomes jerkily hard to control at the bottom. Both the delayed emergency stops and unintentionally aggressive slow-down-a-littles felt genuinely hazardous throughout my week with this car.
The thought did cross my mind, though: “Y’know, maybe it’s just me and this is simply something owners would get used to.” And, sure, the more I drove the CLE, the more skilled I became at modulating its brakes, but the Stockholm syndrome revealed itself the second I hopped back into my personal vehicle at the end of this test. It’s a nine-year-old Lexus IS 350—not a remarkably special or sporting car in the grand scheme of things—but the brake pedal in it instantly and refreshingly felt like a surgical tool in comparison. As commenter Doug Nash aptly wrote under our recent Chevy Traverse review, “Getting used to a bad thing doesn’t make it a good thing.”
The Screens Crapped Out
Two days into CLE possession, I got in, turned the car on, and neither of its screens turned on. In a less fancy car, this may not be that big of a deal but because Mercedes’ MBUX system relegates nearly every readout and a whole lotta input to those screens, pretty much every function outside of actual, physical driving was effectively unavailable. The engine was on, and I could put it into gear and drive around like normal. But there was no speedo, no climate controls, no backup camera, no fuel readout, no nav, no music, no HUD. This is, to put it kindly, Not Ideal. For reference, Mazda recently had to settle a class action lawsuit over infotainment systems that did this exact thing.
The screens did return after turning the car off and on a couple of times, but not before my personal schedule that day dictated that I’d have to take a 15-minute drive with the car’s displays completely and eerily blank.
Look, software hiccups happen, and I think my sentiments toward this car’s tech would be different if the systems were at least good when they did work, but, uh, they aren’t. Physically, the screens themselves are quite impressive: big and sharp with colors that are accurate and vibrant. But the software is, even by nerfed native-car-software expectations, sub-optimal.
There are about a million menus, there doesn’t seem to be a way to turn the heated steering wheel on independently from the heated seats without initiating voice controls, there’s no volume knob (just a slider that’s hard to use without looking), the controls on the steering wheel are stupidly touch-sensitive, and the satellite radio player’s list of recently listened-to channels is oddly and infuriatingly unreliable at keeping track of recently listened-to channels.
Other observed annoyances include mirrors that would occasionally reset themselves into a completely different position than I left them, adaptive cruise follow-distance that would always reset itself to the farthest setting, lights and locks that wouldn’t turn off and lock automatically if you didn’t do it manually after turning off and leaving the car, and a backup camera that always took a beat too long to show up after shifting into reverse. Oh, and despite this car starting at nearly $60,000, lane-keeping assist is not standard (like it is in, say, the competing BMW) and did not appear to be equipped on this tester.
When I emailed Mercedes about the system preferences that would unnecessarily reset themselves, a company rep supported my suspicions that the issues may stem from the fact that those things are tied to driver profiles and that I was driving this car without a Mercedes account. So, if you actually do buy this car and jump through all the proper software hoops, you may not encounter these issues at all, but I will maintain that one shouldn’t have to Log In to be able to safely change lanes in a Mercedes-Benz they don’t necessarily drive every day. I’m so sick of Creating Accounts, you guys.
The Verdict
On a more positive note, most of this car’s tech quirks are things that can be fixed in post, at least in theory. As a car, the Mercedes-Benz CLE300 gets the three basics of Fancy GTdom right: it looks good outside, it looks good inside, and it’ll sit at 90 mph all day long in great fluidity and comfort. There’s a nice, solid luxury car lurking in here somewhere, but in its current, observed state, there are simply too many QOL flaws to make it something worth recommending.
If any other automaker made this, I may be tempted to give the CLE’s long list of cons a pass and chalk its flaws up to bad luck or a lemon of a press unit. The thing is, though: this isn’t the first time we’ve seen similar issues from a modern Mercedes product. The C300 had a similarly wonky brake pedal while deputy editor Jerry Perez actually had the MBUX screens die on him in a pre-production S-Class a few years ago—and, damningly, those didn’t come back after a couple of power cycles.
Also, it has to be said, this is a Mercedes-Benz we are talking about. Not a $10,000 supermini from China. Not a scam car from some EV “startup” in Phoenix. This is a car from the company that quite literally invented cars and has been building them since 1886.
This is a Mercedes-Benz. “The best or nothing.”
If the CLE300 were a kitchen appliance, it’d be an AI-powered “smart” microwave. Yes, it’s very cool that the whole face is a screen and, in theory, it can detect what you just put in it and automatically nuke it to the perfect level of heat. In practice, though, roasts still come out a bit cold in the middle, it mildly ruined movie night last weekend when it refused to make popcorn before updating firmware, and you have used the built-in Spotify function a grand total of once. It delegates way too much of its utility to superfluous tech that just isn’t reliable or user-friendly enough.
It’s a poster child for tech for tech’s sake and will likely feel like a cautionary time capsule years from now, immortalizing some of the worst habits of this current era of automobiles—right down to the “exhaust tips” that are completely fake.
| 2024 Mercedes-Benz CLE300 4Matic Coupe Specs | |
|---|---|
| Base Price (Canadian-spec as tested) | $57,650 ($79,305 CAD) |
| Powertrain | 2.0-liter turbo-four with 48-volt mild hybrid | 9-speed automatic | all-wheel drive |
| Horsepower | 255 @ 5,800 rpm (gas) 23 (electric) |
| Torque | 295 lb-ft @ 2,000-3,200 rpm (gas) 151 lb-ft (electric) |
| Seating Capacity | 4 |
| Cargo Volume | 11.2 cubic feet |
| Curb Weight | 4,057 pounds |
| 0-60 mph | 6.2 seconds |
| Top Speed | 130 mph |
| EPA Fuel Economy | 24 mpg city | 34 highway | 28 combined | 24 observed |
| Score | 6/10 |
Quick Take
There’s a decent grand tourer hidden here somewhere. It’s just buried under a big pile of buggy, technological bullshit.
Got a tip or question for the author about the CLE? You can reach him here: chris.tsui@thedrive.com