Funny coincidence that I post in this thread today and on my way home today a CLA250 pulls up in the lane next to me!

I can say that I'm not that big a fan of the tail end of the car. A bit curvy for my tastes coming from the 126/124/201 generations of a cars.

Certainly looked aggressive.


Also spotted a 126 350SD on the turnpike tooling along at a healthy 85!

Tom, humor me and google "Mercedes CLA 250 torque steer" The results may surprise.

The AWD hits next spring, with a max 50/50 split.

Daimler does need to sell a lot of these cars to comply with European and US CAFE mpg standards, to offset all those V8 powered sedans and SUVs.

As I said in a previous thread about this, torque steer is only one plague of fwd, one which is largely eliminated these days (my gti had very little). Under steer and acceleration are two other, more important (IMHO) hurdles.

And again, Google will be your friend. ;)

Push the CLA hard into a corner and it responds willingly, but steering with the drive wheels eventually reaches a limit that results in mild understeer. We also sampled the 4Matic all-wheel-drive CLA, which sends power to the rear wheels as needed, and found it more eager to jump out of hairpins and more stable though high-speed corners. The seven-speed dual-clutch automatic defaults to an efficiency mode when the car is turned on, and it has a preference for high gears and is reluctant to downshift. It's not a problem during normal driving, but on adrenaline-inducing roads it's necessary to switch to sport mode or shift using the steering wheel paddles.

Hardly a beast to drive.

What are you even implying? I've read probably a hundred reviews of the CLA and the AMG45 since the initial reports all up until now, and even considered waiting for it when most recently buying a car. You just keep repeating yourself that modern FWD is amazing and there is no torquesteer. Wowza. Been there and done that. The CLA has electronic nannies to counter the torquesteer (and understeer)... and yes it does indeed have to counter the laws of physics like every other car. I'm sure its very good for a fwd car but lets leave it at that.

If your equivalency of FWD to RWD and AWD performance is solely based on torquesteer then there's no reason to even argue. Go buy a VW or Focus ST already and save a few bucks. You won't notice the difference.

So what on earth are you trying to make a case for FWD for?

The "point" is to get so-called Mercedes enthusiasts to join the rest of us in the early 21st Century and to possibly believe that the Golden Age of MB didn't end with the W126 and diesels. Mercedes is often at its best when they change the paradigm for the old fans.

As for FWD, the technology has gotten better each year, just like automatic transmissions and power steering, it's just those that want to hold onto cliche that won't admit it.

Derp, of course it is. Not part of the conversation until now.

Yes it has, and its still nowhere near RWD or AWD at those power levels. As someone smack in the target market for this, actually just having bought direct competition to the CLA, and having JUST come from a modern FWD car (almost exactly the same power level) that is critiqued almost identically to the CLA, I'll pass. I don't want a FWD car for 35-40k -- period. They have different handling characteristics that I find undesirable.