Mercedes-AMG CLE 53 Coupe review – a sheep in wolf’s clothing

It might not have escaped your attention that almost three years since we first drove the hybrid Mercedes-AMG C63, we haven’t had it back. We didn’t think much of the direction AMG had headed down, replacing the growly 4-litre twin-turbocharged V8 with a 2-litre electrified four-cylinder. Heavy, uninvolving and all just a little uninspiring, it was a far cry from raucous AMGs of years gone by. The question now is, can Affalterbach’s coupe alternative bring any of that magic back?

The CLE 53 (Coupe 4Matic+, to give it its full name) is the flagship model in the CLE line that effectively replaces both the C and E-class Coupés. The 53 variant therefore takes over from the C43 and E53 Coupés, and is also where former C63 Coupé customers will need to look for now if they prefer their AMGs with two doors. While this car sits beneath 63 models in AMG’s hierarchy, intriguingly it comes with two more cylinders than the aforementioned C63, and it looks the part too.

> BMW M2 CS review – another all-time great M car?

While the four-cylinder C63 goes without the lairy looks, aggressive swollen arches and imposing road presence we expect from a fully-fledged AMG, this CLE 53 has all of the above to turn heads like not much else in this segment. The bespoke, intricate wheel design is deeply concave and when combined with its widened bodywork, you’d be forgiven for thinking this was a new Black Series. My first sighting of this car at the Nürburgring in camouflaged mule guise led me to believe it was a fire-breathing V8-powered flagship. How wrong I was.

11

Engine, gearbox and 0-62mph time

Like the current C63, the CLE 53 does not have a V8 engine under its ridged bonnet, but instead a mild-hybrid 3-litre turbocharged straight-six; one of the benefits of the CLE having the front end of an E-class is that engines with more than four cylinders fit behind its AMG grille. Output is some way from the headline 670bhp peak of its plug-in hybrid four-cylinder S E Performance relatives, at 443bhp, with torque at 443lb ft on overboost.

It’s not an especially charismatic engine, certainly not in the vain of its eight-cylinder predecessor, with a rather flat note to its delivery, no induction noise to startle your hairs and a somewhat muted exhaust tone, although that last one is no bad thing in a world where too many think that making their cars sound like a filing cabinet full of spanners falling down a flight of stairs is a good thing. Reasonable long-distance economy in the region of 35mpg is also not particularly AMG.

In its default drive mode, Comfort, the CLE 53 reacts in a similar way to how it sounds, with a lethargy and a slow response to throttle inputs that’s at odds with the AMG sports seats that pinch you in place. The controls and the car’s reactions feel languid, like it’s trying to fight its way out of the stickiest treacle – it can be quite hard to judge throttle inputs for a timely, smooth departure from a standstill as a result. Its 450 cousin, powered by the same engine in a lower state of tune, feels more energetic at times. 

11

Twisting the steering-wheel-mounted drive mode control to Sport enlivens the 53, injecting it with some of the AMG DNA that its wider front wheelarches, rear diffuser and oversized air-intakes promise. The responses are more alert, the throttle’s improved eagerness welcome. Yet it’s not a quick engine: the revs take some time to build and it highlights that this isn’t a pure-bred AMG motor, rather a series unit that’s been tweaked by Affalterbach. The mild-hybrid torque fill low in the rev range gives you the sense that you’re about to receive a slug of performance, but it just never quite comes. To this end the M256 includes optimised combustion chambers, new piston rings, new inlet and outlet channels and a new turbocharger with the boost pressure increased to 1.5 bar, up from 0.4. 

Ride and handling

Through its mid-range there’s just enough potency to energise the CLE’s chassis. The Sport setting adds weight to the steering, and while chassis feel isn’t something the CLE 53 proclaims to have much of, it’s precise and super positive on turn-in, with the chunky 265-section front Michelin Pilot Sport S 5 tyres keen to find and hold their purchase. But the authentic, detailed response and adjustability you get in a BMW M4 isn’t there; it feels like you’re wearing a pair of thick gloves where the BMW feels like you’re driving with your fingertips exposed. 

The AMG corners flat, and through quick turns feels confident and assured, if not exactly enthralling. It’s hugely competent and well within itself as you build speed, but its personality is deeply buried beyond its high levels of reassuring traction and solid connection with the surface. Its pace impresses as you make progress but the combination of its bland engine tone and inexpressive high-speed handling make it perilously close to being one-dimensional. 

Turn the dial up to Sport+ and the 53 locks down further still, the even sharper throttle, stiffer damper rate and quicker gearshift times feeling like they’ve been driven by the need to show an ‘improvement’ in an algorithm rather than add anything to the driving experience. Shifting manually doesn’t bring much to the table as while upshifts are swift, downshifts are slow to come and hard to use to your advantage when pushing on.

11

On a tighter course it feels more impressive. It’s not a small car – at close to 2000kg it’s not a light one either – but the rate at which it gets into the heart of a lower-speed turn is unexpected, the car waking up from its numb high-speed slumber. With the front tyres hooked in, the rest of the car pivots round you, the rear-wheel steering adding more to the CLE’s agility other than simply assisting during manoeuvring in tight spaces. It encourages you to open the throttle much earlier to get out of the corner as spritely as possible. Which is where you miss the great slug of V8 torque of old to measure out and balance the car’s trajectory. 

This crystallises what was missing on those quicker roads, where the corners flowed and the road ran away from you: the powertrain doesn’t have enough going for it for you to extract from the CLE 53 what it’s been set up to achieve. From the moment you see it, with its larger four-piston calipers, dark-finished alloy wheels, gurney spoiler on the rear deck and muscular proportions, you’re expecting much more. But little happens. 

Interior and tech

Open its oddly weighty doors and you’ll find that the cabin is consistent with the rest of Mercedes’ range, chock full of tech with high-resolution cameras, cutting-edge (if a little tacky) lighting and plenty of nifty features hidden (quite literally) within the central portrait infotainment display. 

Unfortunately Mercedes takes advantage of this tech-heavy architecture by implementing microtransactions, which is one thing on an entry-level car, and another on a range-topping AMG that starts from £75,660 – clicking the dedicated Adaptive Cruise Control button on the wheel of our test car prompted a ‘...not enabled, but can be purchased at a later date’ message…

11

The optional AMG sports seats look and feel the part, so too the standard chairs, and there’s carbonfibre and leather where you expect them, a flat-bottomed steering wheel and those two rotary dials on the bottom of it to adjust drive, damper and ESC modes. You can even configure the instrument display to an uninterpretable mess if you wish. Changes to the steel springs’ rates, damper loads and chassis kinematics have all been designed to sharpen responses, deliver more feedback and offer more control. Even in its comfort setting though, the ride is hardly supple, with road noise from its wide tyres always present.  

Strip away the AMG-ness and the CLE 53 would be a desirable six-cylinder coupe with the credentials to make progress under the radar. Your expectations would be lower and therefore the experience you got back more rewarding as a consequence. Instead it’s a car that wants you to believe it’s a fully-fledged AMG, but that’s quite a stretch from the reality and another example of why AMG needs to get to grips with its small engine portfolio as a matter of urgency. Or make use of the engine bay’s dimensions and slip the V8 back in.

Price and rivals

It’s a shallow pool of rivals for the CLE 53, with the straight-six, all-wheel drive BMW M440i xDrive coupe one of its only direct competitors – that it costs £62,140 compared to the £75,660 AMG charges for the CLE 53 4MATIC+ makes the Munich machine hard to ignore. BMW did have the £83,990 840i M Sport in its armoury, but this has since been pulled from the market. Audi doesn’t currently have a single hot coupe to rival the CLE, with S5 also having been discontinued.

Mercedes-AMG CLE 53 Coupé specs