Affalterbach battle: Can a CLE 53 keep up with a CLK Black Series?

There was extra bracing in the engine bay and swathes of carbonfibre just about everywhere – even across the chasm left empty by its absent rear seats.

Yet its kerb weight matched its base car, despite a bank of blanked-out switches; there’s not even a parking sensor to be found, somewhat terrifyingly, given the car’s value. 

However, this doesn’t immediately feel like the track-hardened, driver-focused weapon it was lauded as in the late noughties. Sure, its engine fires ferociously into life, practically rocking the bodywork around you. But the steering wheel looks mundane Merc, no aggressive wings or roll-cage latticework fill your mirrors and a fiddly lever operates an occasionally reticent automatic gearbox.

It’s a world away from the lightened flywheels and chuntering revs of other Stuttgart-born specials of the era.

Like the very best driver’s cars, though, the Black Series’ magic is easily found. While the transmission does feel ponderous under interrogation (even its sportier modes need a mental ‘one… two…’ between shifts), every other element of the car feels so constantly alive that you’ll never pine for anything else.

Beyond the Comfort, Sport or Manual modes of the ’box, there’s nothing left to press beyond the ESP button (which does ‘on’ or ‘off’ with a mere tap), so you can get right into the thick of driving it.

It’s surprising how compliant the ride feels. We’re used to the gnarliest specials rattling our teeth and spine in road use, but the Black Series is never anything other than a fast, ferocious Mercedes-Benz, smoothing the edges of Britain’s road surfaces.

You could spend hundreds of miles ensconced in its bucket seat and feel brilliant. There’s certainly little need to trailer it to a track day, even if an SUV with a tow hook might deliver better fuel efficiency.

But you will almost certainly set an early alarm so you can take the long route there. This is a real ‘last gallon on Earth’ contender, a car designed with its focus almost unwaveringly on fun.

And despite its incongruous comfort, it’s no softie, providing the feel and fidelity of some of the greatest track specials yet demanding little of their commitment.

Its steering bubbles away, telegraphing the movements of a car that teeters on the edge of mimicking a V8 Caterham in its swagger. You feel the moment its driven wheels begin to relinquish grip, as the rear starts to arc wide, and it’s your choice whether to feed in more power and indulge it or back off and neaten things up. It can do neat and tidy, but it feels at its most authentic moving around, smearing the Tarmac even with the ESP on. 

And, boy, is it quick once you’re pointing straight, bounding forwards in a way that belies its 1.7 tonnes. It’s a car I simply don’t want to hand back. If it’s this spectacular now, what must it have felt like at the time?

The CLE 53 can never match such large heart and character, but it exhibits real dynamism right from the off. Its 4Matic+ four-wheel drive continually shifts power around but has a definite rear bias and, allied with all-wheel steering (a first in a 53 model), it demonstrates more urgency than its endlessly plush (and pixel-rich) cabin might otherwise suggest.

There’s certainly no bank of blank switches in here. Mind, it’s disarmingly easy to manoeuvre compared with the burly Black Series. The rear steer and an abundance of parking cameras make moving it around a doddle, yet as soon as you’re rolling, there’s evident nous to the more mechanical bits beneath.

It exhibits real tension in the ride, whichever of the multitudinous modes you’ve selected, and a pleasing snarl from the six-cylinder up front in its sportier settings.

The whooshes and hisses of turbocharging that are proudly absent in the vociferously atmo CLK bring welcome character to the progress you make in here. Although it will never match the gargling war cry of that venerable 6.2-litre V8, this CLE sounds good.

Its powertrain is largely free of lag too (gaps in the power delivery are papered over by a 22bhp mild-hybrid element), but the keener among us are still encouraged to wring out the revs. Just shift up slightly below the limiter in manual mode: it cuts in keenly.

Even though its headline accelerative benchmark betters that of the Black Series, the CLE 53 doesn’t feel as outrageously quick, its 58 fewer horses and 165 extra kilograms taking some of the blame.

I like its relative modesty, though: it’s not as outlandishly, unusably fast as some sports saloon rivals have become and you can at least feel like you’re exploring its performance and approaching its limits like in the more slapstick CLK.

This CLE represents a much more rounded package and can’t help feeling a bit staid in such company. But even a cursory scroll through its bewildering mix of modes unleashes something that can thrill, something that will provide depth as an ownership proposition.