Mercedes CLS

Mercedes CLS > Face Lifts Don't Cure Ugly

CLS. Face lifted.

Taking a note from Joan Rivers, Mercedes-Benz has - after four prosperous years - elected to update its CLS-Class with a face (and tail) lift. And as is also the case for the renowned comedienne, we have yet to see the benefits that such augmentation has brought.

Somethings really are better left for time to sort naturally. It's not that the CLS looks bad now or before, per se. Coming to think of it, Joan Rivers doesn't look bad either - but let's stop that train of thought there.

It's that the sedan - no sorry - "coop-ay," is a seriously contrived P.O.S. (and that acronym doesn't stand for "point of sale")

Time and again, I fail to see the "romance" in those comic book curves. The CLS looks like something the Joker would drive if only it were sold in acid green and dark purple.

Plus, there's that mousy front airdam (which the face lift didn't help) and those amorphous yet somehow pointed headlights. Combined they give the Merc the look that an angry sewer rat might give a wayward cat.

And on the topic of Mercs, what urks me further about the CLS is that Stuttgart's arts & ideas people seemed to have drawn all their emotive inspiration from the late 1990s Mercury Sable; probably the second lamest car for a decade when FoMoCo design knew no depths.

The rear three quarter profile similarities are scarily similar. So rather than celebrate along with the rest of press for the new CLS' recent return from Palm Springs' seclusion, I'd prefer to extol the Camry-esque virtues of the platform-sharing E-Class instead.

Something tells me that Joan would, too.

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