Mercedes-Benz CLE 300e review

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Does a technically progressive PHEV powertrain work in a coupe that exudes such old-school vibes?

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If the past decade of automotive history has proved anything, it’s probably that no modern car, however commercially successful it may once have been, can be considered totally timeless.

The Mercedes berlinetta coupe, however, has certainly always looked like a timeless design classic. The celebrated line of two-door icons from the firm encompasses the original 1950s ‘gullwing’ sports cars; various larger ‘Ponton’ and ‘Fintail’ models following shortly thereafter; the imposing, square SEC models of the 1980s; the revered W124-generation coupes of the1990s; and even the popular CLK Kompressors of the noughties.

And it’s the popularity of the CLK that Mercedes is hoping to rekindle with its latest two-door gambit: the Mercedes-Benz CLE Coupe. The firm has, for sizable chunks of recent time, sold as many as three coupe model lines in parallel, not counting its AMG-only models and dedicated convertibles, but now the CLE becomes the only one. The S-Class Coupe died with the C217-gen model in 2020. Meanwhile, the old C-Class- and E-Class Coupe models now find a common successor in this CLE, which splits the difference between those cars with its outright size. 

For those who like such geekery, this car becomes Mercedes model codename ‘C236’ as a coupe, and ‘A236’ as a cabriolet. It entered production in October 2023, the first right-hand-drive models reaching the UK in spring 2024. It was offered with a choice of four- and six-cylinder petrol engines initially, as well as in turbo six-cylinder AMG 53 form, and can now also be had with the same choice of powerplants as a four-seater cabriolet, if you prefer.

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The final piece of the puzzle is our test subject, the CLE 300e: the coupe-only, technically progressive, fleet-friendly plug-in hybrid version, which braves the scrutiny of our timing gear in AMG Line Premium Plus model trim.

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DESIGN & STYLING

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Mercedes Benz CLE 300e review 2024 02 side panning

This car has plainly been carefully positioned to appeal to owners of both outgoing C-Class and E-Class two-doors. But while it may look rather more C-Class than E-Class, it’s proportioned differently. A wheelbase some 25mm longer than the old C-Class Coupe’s is within 10mm of the bigger antecedent model’s. On overall length, meanwhile, the difference between this car and the old E-Class Coupe is actually only 5mm. 

Platform architecture doesn’t actually tell us whether this car is more ‘E’ than ‘C’, since both models use Mercedes’ MRA2 structure. However, production line commonality would seem to confirm the defining relationship with the smaller car: the CLE is built at Mercedes’ Bremen plant, alongside the C-Class and EQE, whereas E-Class production is based at Sindelfingen, alongside the S-Class and EQS.

Mercedes has been uncharacteristically bold with its colour palette on this car. Go for a CLE Cabriolet and you can actually have a cloth roof in bright red – although only, sadly, in combination with Obsidian Black paint.
Illya Verpraet
Road Tester

To look at, the CLE’s inwardly tapering headlights and broad-based radiator grille are recognisable from the C-Class’s design copybook. The car’s slightly drawn rear overhang and its arcing roofline certainly give it kerbside appeal beyond that of a more ordinary C-Class, though, and the full-width rear light bar is a nod to Mercedes’ EQ-brand models. All told, the CLE builds on the tradition of subtly boosting, but not radically advancing on, the desirability of an equivalent Benz saloon.

Technically, then, alongside the four- and six-cylinder engines already on offer comes what Mercedes calls its fourth-generation hybrid drivetrain. It’s primarily powered by a 2.0-litre turbocharged ‘M254’ four-cylinder engine making 201bhp and 236lb ft of torque. But that drives into one of the firm’s 9G-Tronic Plus nine-speed automatic gearboxes along with a permanent magnet synchronous motor capable of making 127bhp and 325lb ft all by itself. The motor is backed by a nickel-manganese-cobalt drive battery of 25.4kWh total capacity, sited under the boot floor.

This CLE therefore surrenders the underfloor boot space its sibling models offer and its weight distribution has shifted somewhat towards the rear axle relative to derivatives, which our proving ground scales confirmed (47% front, 53% rear). It also uses self-levelling air suspension at the rear, rather than conventional steel coils, to better control that weight. Suspension is otherwise via multiple links at both axles.

Our test car weighed 2122kg in running order and with half a tank of fuel on board – a figure clearly impacted by a generously sized drive battery, but not necessarily problematic in a car that should have luxurious, rather than overly sporting, priorities.

 

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INTERIOR

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Mercedes Benz CLE 300e review 2024 09 front seats

It will take upgrading C-Class owners only seconds to recognise the ‘squircle’-style air vents and rounded transmission tunnel console of their old saloon here. The CLE’s cabin layout, specification and finish are very much, and rather apparently, C-Class-derived. That’s perhaps marginally more likely to disappoint those giving up an old E-Class Coupe for it than a C-Class Coupe, although neither very much.

This car’s perceived quality – the solidity and heft of its fixings and switches when they move, and the pervading look and feel of its various mouldings and materials – is certainly high enough to escape particular criticism. There’s the usual sense of gloss and glitz to the trims and materials chosen.

Seatbelt butlers – those little robotised arms extending from the B-pillar to physically hand you your belt – seem like some 1950s feature on a 2020s car. But despite so many decades of evolution, they still don’t always extend or retract on cue.
Matt Saunders
Road test editor

Our Premium Plus test car came with an attractive combination of ‘aluminium lines’ dashboard decor (lower trims get a more ordinary wood-effect trim) and Tonka Brown upholstery, which certainly lifted its ambience. However, the car’s part-synthetic leather lacks a little softness to the touch and, as has been the case with mid-tier Mercedes in recent years, the wider interior doesn’t go above and beyond class standards for material fit and finish. It should meet most people’s expectations, without setting new standards for richness or luxury aura.

The driving position is of medium hip height and the front seats offer plenty of adjustability for longer-legged drivers and reasonable, though not exceptional, comfort and support. The digital instruments are clear and very widely configurable.

While the steering wheel’s spoke-mounted controls for them, and those of the multimedia system itself, are easy to brush by mistake, they’re welcome as an alternative to so much more hands-off prodding and swiping at the central screen.

Second-row space is a little disappointing in that it’s only about typical for a mid-sized coupe (the CLE was within 20mm for both head room and leg room of the Lexus RC F we tested recently, itself effectively a 10-year-old car). The seats are usable by smaller adults and growing kids, but taller passengers won’t want to travel there for more than a short journey.

Impacted by that underfloor battery, boot volume is cut from 420- to 290 litres – and loading depth is affected most obviously. The CLE 300e’s boot floor is at least flat and the folding rear seatbacks offer through-loading potential, but a loading height of 350mm at its maximum could make carrying some bulkier loads difficult.

Multimedia

The CLE 300e omits Mercedes’ lowest-level derivative trim, being available from AMG Line Premium trim and upwards, so it gets an 11.9in portrait-oriented main infotainment screen as standard, which comes with full wireless smartphone integration and 360deg parking cameras.

Upgrade to the Premium Plus trim of our test car and you will get a colour head-up display and Burmester surround-sound premium audio as well, in addition to augmented reality directions for the navigation system. Since Mercedes’ AR navigation displays directions in slightly distracting fashion on the infotainment screen itself, taking over the display where you might simply be looking for a conventional turn instruction, our testers don’t particularly rate it.

The main MBUX multimedia system is much more recommendable generally, though. It has a physical cursor controller on the left-hand spoke of the steering wheel, so you needn’t prod at the screen much if you simply prefer not to; it has particularly accessible ‘zero layer’ quick-reference navigability; and it displays useful shortcut icons (for toggling Apple CarPlay, for instance, or disabling the speed limit reminder function) permanently around the periphery of the screen.

Our CLE had a Burmester 3D surround-sound premium audio system fitted, which includes speakers integrated into the seats at headrest height, supposedly to enhance the ‘spatial audio’ properties of the Dolby Atmos stereo. The system seemed capable enough and well suited to the car, but it didn’t particularly impress our testers.

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ENGINES & PERFORMANCE

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Mercedes Benz CLE 300e review 2024 19 engine

The CLE 300e’s pricing leaves it a little exposed in this section. There are significantly quicker and more powerful plug-in hybrid executive options (although, to be fair, no traditional two-door coupes) you could buy for less than this Merc’s outlay; likewise quicker all-electric executive options to consider and, for private buyers, quicker ICE options too. Up your budget slightly and a six-cylinder, four-wheel-drive BMW 550e PHEV isn’t far away.

But it may well be that Mercedes considered all of that and was wise enough to focus on performance considerations that it knew this car could more easily distinguish itself with: specifically, refinement, drivability and electric range. Broadly speaking, that’s what the CLE 300e does. It’s not especially fast by the standards of £60,000 electrified cars, nor enticing to drive fast, but it does have the kind of isolation and slickness you’d hope for in a luxury car and it is easy and agreeable to drive.

The electric motor always supplies lots of accessible torque almost irrespective of the selected gear, as our in-gear acceleration numbers show. By doing so, it keeps the gearbox from hunting for downshifts and the combustion engine either at low revs or shut down entirely. Moreover, when the 2.0-litre petrol engine is running – and even when it is called on to work hard – it isn’t as vocal or intrusive as some turbo four-pots can be in cars like this.

The CLE 300e’s electric-only performance feels ample at town speeds and adequate enough at A- and B-road pace. An accelerator with adjustable haptic feedback makes it easy to drive the car up to the bounds of the electric motor when you want to and not to tread beyond. When you do that, as our timing gear confirmed, 0-30mph can be ticked off in 3.7sec and 0-60mph in 12.2sec – fast enough, easily, to keep up with the traffic. 

Unlike in some rival PHEVs, Mercedes gives you paddle-configurable brake energy regen control when running in electric mode, which is a boost to drivability and means you may seldom need the brake pedal in urban running. When you do use it, pedal progression can feel a little soft and inconsistent but it isn’t bad enough to seriously irritate.

RIDE & HANDLING

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Mercedes Benz CLE 300e review 2024 22 rear cornering

The CLE 300e’s suspension specification differs from that of other CLE Coupes. It eschews the Agility Control sport suspension that other models get as standard, riding 15mm higher than its rangemates. It also adopts self-levelling adjustable air suspension in place of the usual steel coils at the rear axle. And while other CLEs move onto bigger rims in higher-tier trims, this one stays on 19in alloy wheels even as in AMG Line Premium Plus spec. 

Could all of that make this the best-riding, most comfortable CLE in the line-up? We wouldn’t bet against it. The car is far from soft and wafting, offering a well-judged compromise of suppleness and isolation alongside dependable lateral body control and decent steering precision. It steers easily, with medium-fast pace and light control weight, and is also capable enough of keeping tabs on the movements of its body at speed while allowing enough suspension travel and bump absorption for a fairly gentle, calm, filtered ride.

The Goodyear tyres chosen for the car do seem to be of quite a stiff rubber compound and don’t deliver anything in the way of tactile steering feel – not that you’d expect much of that on the easy-feeding helm of a Mercedes coupé. They also didn’t withstand the rigours of track testing very robustly: our test car’s front tyres evidently started to overheat before our Horiba MIRA dry handling testing was completed, although, since they were no doubt chosen with low rolling resistance and ride isolation in mind, we might easily forgive that too.

There is at least a little rear-drive handling balance to be enjoyed here, through the uncorrupted consistency of the steering and the neatness with which the chassis gently points its way out of corners. A hurried pace on a rising and falling country road does begin to test the car’s wheel control, though, and, by making the body heave and jounce a little bit, remind you that this is still a 2.1-tonne car.

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MPG & RUNNING COSTS

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Mercedes Benz CLE 300e review 2024 01 front panning

This Mercedes may be in a class of one as a mid-sized PHEV executive coupé, but that doesn’t make it immune from value comparisons. As we have mentioned, other major purveyors of plug-in hybrid exec cars offer either more power and performance for less outlay than this CLE or a six-cylinder engine for a comparable price.

Electric range might be the car’s cold-headed saving grace for those who need one in addition to the more subjective desirability of a coupé, but even here the CLE leaves something critical to be desired. In offering up to 69 miles of tax-qualifying electric range, it does go further than key rivals – and yet it falls an agonising one mile short of making it into a 5% benefit-in-kind bracket for this financial year.

In our testing, the car returned an average 49 miles of real-world, mixed-roads electric range, which is a little shorter of the WLTP claim than we had hoped for. No DC rapid-charging compatibility is offered for the car, although less widely available three-phase 11kW AC charging is supported.

Without a lot of short-range all-electric running, then, and given the car’s fairly average efficiency in hybrid mode, we wouldn’t expect owners to average much more than an aggregated 55mpg or 60mpg.

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VERDICT

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Mercedes Benz CLE 300e review 2024 23 rear static

The CLE 300e’s plug-in hybrid powertrain may not seem an obvious choice for an otherwise fairly traditional, elegant two-door coupé. Yet if you like the look of this old-soul Merc, a new-wave petrolelectric powertrain may be just the way to have it.

It gives this CLE an amiably refined and laid-back dynamic demeanour, not just in how it performs but – thanks to the quirks of Mercedes’ model specification – also in how it rides and handles. If you want comfort and gentility from your modern German extra-desirable exec, consider it.

This model would have stronger appeal with slightly more practicality, better extended-range efficiency and, for company car drivers, slightly more electric range. But even as it is, the CLE 300e is both likeably ‘classic’ and genuinely refreshing, and it’s pretty easy to make a case for.

Matt Saunders

Matt Saunders Autocar
Title: Road test editor

As Autocar’s chief car tester and reviewer, it’s Matt’s job to ensure the quality, objectivity, relevance and rigour of the entirety of Autocar’s reviews output, as well contributing a great many detailed road tests, group tests and drive reviews himself.

Matt has been an Autocar staffer since the autumn of 2003, and has been lucky enough to work alongside some of the magazine’s best-known writers and contributors over that time. He served as staff writer, features editor, assistant editor and digital editor, before joining the road test desk in 2011.

Since then he’s driven, measured, lap-timed, figured, and reported on cars as varied as the Bugatti Veyron, Rolls-Royce Phantom, Tesla Roadster, Ariel Hipercar, Tata Nano, McLaren Senna, Renault Twizy and Toyota Mirai. Among his wider personal highlights of the job have been covering Sebastien Loeb’s record-breaking run at Pikes Peak in 2013; doing 190mph on derestricted German autobahn in a Brabus Rocket; and driving McLaren’s legendary ‘XP5’ F1 prototype. His own car is a trusty Mazda CX-5.