Mercedes-Benz CLA review

Now here’s where it gets interesting. The CLA can come with an MBUX Superscreen that consists of an entire dash of screens: a 10.25-inch driver’s display, a 14-inch central touchscreen and another 14-inch passenger screen from which passengers can dull their frontal cortex with YouTube shorts.

Except the passenger screen is optional, and if you don’t pay, you just get a big slab of black plastic speckled with star emblems. It’s not the most aesthetic of solutions. Plus, it’s a LOT of screens.

But before you decry the haptic-awfulness of touchscreen dominance, there’s another way to communicate with the CLA that works better than most; you just talk to it. Merc’s new Virtual Assistant is infused with artificial intelligence from Microsoft and Google, can sense your mood (and act accordingly) and even has a short-term memory.

What that means is that you can ask/tell the system pretty complicated things and it (generally) works them out. So you can adjust the relevant parts of the car (air con, radio, sat nav, phone etc), but also ask it to find you a Thai restaurant that serves a particular dish, or a pub that serves Sunday roast that also allows dogs.

It’ll learn, accrete habits, do all the usual, even deliver over-the-air updates for complex systems that should keep the CLA relevant in terms of future-proofing. Very clever, if that’s your bag, though it has so many possible functions it’d take a while to get used to and make the most of it. Sometimes you just want to drive somewhere. Hats off to one of the swiftest, most intuitive self-parking systems we've yet encountered, though.

What about the actual interior?

The rest of the interior is well-made and spacious, with some nice materials. Big, floating centre console with cupholders and wireless charging pad, plenty of storage and visual interest.

You can have a newly developed seat upholstery with a technical-looking pearl effect in black or white, and there are trims that come in open-pore wood, brushed aluminium, an anodised look and a decorative paper surface that’s a bit like laminate of natural bamboo. It’s better than it sounds.

Space is good, the boot is decent at 405 litres and it’s all very Merc-solid. Basically, no huge surprises.