Classic Wheels
Gallery 1
First published in the July 2014 issue of Wheels magazine, Australia’s best car mag since 1953.
BMW is back hunting sports car enthusiasts with its cracking new BMW M235i coupe. But so is the ballistic Mercedes-Benz CLA45 AMG.
Don’t you hate it when something you once adored turns a bit ugly? It happens to bands, brands, friends, partners, venues, burgers, cafes, clothes, and plenty of other things, not to mention cars. One minute you’re loving each other’s company, wondering how anything or anybody could improve on right now, and the next, something changes.
That’s BMW’s last decade condensed into a paragraph. In 2002, before run-flats, techno-nerd steering and exponential product proliferation overshadowed its Ultimate Driving Machine focus, virtually every BMW defined great steering, supreme balance and a brilliant ride/handling mix. They won comparo after comparo and were consistently fantastic to drive. But somewhere along the way, the magic dynamic sparkle that was pretty much a guarantee in every machine from Munich, large or small, fast or slow, was deemed less important than one-upping other German brands’ technology. “Look at me, my tyres still work when they’re soft”. Great.
Yep, a Mini in a muu-muu.
But if there’s a 2 Series good enough to wipe BMW’s dynamic slate clean, it’s this one – the six-cylinder, turbocharged M235i. And what better foe to throw it against than Mercedes-Benz’s similarly priced CLA45AMG. It, too, is a coupe (if you believe Stuttgart’s marketing dreamers) but with four doors, rather than two, and sporting AMG’s firecracker 2.0-litre turbo donk with just four pots. And a whole lot of menace.
The CLA45’s upturned-boat shape isn’t a universal crowd pleaser like the C63, but at least it’s distinctive, and in this case, resplendent in fashionable white with black 19s, gloss-black mirrors, front splitter and rear diffuser, and a darkened-glass sunroof. No Mercedes-Benz CLA has ever looked cooler, and this one also boasts $1990 worth of sports suspension, which drops it slightly closer to the tarmac and turns what was already a pretty sharp mover into an uncompromising handling supremo.
Even the M235i’s turn-in is brilliant. Trail some brake into a tight 35km/h corner and you can feel its chassis pivot, instinctively setting itself up for a rapid-fire corner exit. Unlike the wayward M135i hatch, which never had the rear suspension control to handle the turbo six’s copious grunt, the coupe’s power-down is fantastic. Even with ESC off, a hard driven M235i requires provocation to spin its wheels or step its tail out. Finally, a non-M Bee-Em with the abilities of its more exalted brethren.
On lumpy surfaces tackled in Sport mode, the M235i is unsettled and has far too much vertical movement, yet on a smooth and twisty road, it’s wonderful. Selecting Comfort mode calms things down a lot, though at one stage I reached for the gimmicky Driver Experience rocker switch to knock it back to Comfort, only to realise I was already there…
Unfortunately, none of the M235i’s steering options are ideal. The new three-spoke M wheel is superb, but the steering itself is noticeably electric at straight ahead. When cruising, you can sense a phase of numbness and feel the weighting change. In Comfort mode, it’s too light and disinterested, yet in Sport, it’s still too aloof for a performance coupe of this calibre. You spend much of the time wishing the M235i’s steering had a setting between Comfort and Sport, and that its damping did likewise.
Whether heading to the shops for milk or hammering along the unforgiving Putty Road, the sports-suspended CLA45 is ultra-firm. But even with about as much forgiveness as a Taliban racial policy, it manages to avoid vertical pitch or suspension crash-through, and offers a level of body control so tight, it’s vice-like. Yet the firmer suspension has the added benefit of moving the CLA45’s centre-of-gravity pivot point rearward, reducing understeer to near-zero. The angles you can create with your right foot are even more satisfying in this CLA than they are in the standard AMG.
You get so much more feedback in the Benz than in the BMW. Even the CLA’s brakes talk more, with much cleaner pedal feel and less travel than the similarly effective BMW stoppers. And while the CLA’s steering can be unsettled by harsh mid-corner bumps, it’s generally pretty good, allowing its driver to easily trace a fine line through a bend.
In Sport mode, the M235i’s superb straight-six wails like a BMW engine should, with a crisp induction growl and a gorgeous rasp from its rear pipes, while the CLA45 doesn’t need to have a mode selected because it gets a sports exhaust standard. The Mercedes is the more gratuitous of the two – blatting, popping and whip-cracking from its quad pipes – but choosing a favourite is hard. I’d pick the M235i, simply because it revs to 7300rpm and is the best-sounding turbo-six Beemer there is. It also drinks less juice.
The CLA45 has some great touches, like its alcantara-covered wheel rim and its grippy, red-piped seats, but the test car’s plastic cover on the electric seat-bolster switches was loose and there was humming from the driver’s belt-height adjuster, which is something we’ve experienced in almost every A and CLA we’ve driven.
What it all comes down to, though, is purpose. While the M235i tries to be a sports coupe that appeals to a broad range of people, the CLA45 is singular in focus and makes no excuses for it. Brilliant as the BMW’s drivetrain and core chassis DNA may be, its damping and steering flaws expose the fact that it isn’t a true M-car. Admire its style, appreciate its practicality, love its balance and adore its engine, but it just doesn’t quite tie it all together. Not at the moment.
What is really, really surprising, though, is just how well the sports-suspended CLA45 works on the road. In this guise, it’s a brilliant performance sedan/coupe with a single-minded desire to thrill its driver. And maybe the front passenger. As a four seater, it’s borderline useless, but treat it as a two-plus-two, like you would the M235i, and be willing to accept its unforgiving ride, and it’s a thrill machine par-excellence.
