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By Jonathan Crouch

The third generation Mercedes CLA Shooting Brake is a quirky but interesting and very advanced small estate. Jonathan Crouch takes a look.

Ten Second Reviewword count: 36

There's lots to like about Mercedes' third generation CLA, but some might think that the four-door model lacks a bit of visual pizzazz. It gains a dose more of that in this Shooting Brake estate form.

Backgroundword count: 109

The CLA Shooting Brake has proved to be a small but profitable seller for Mercedes. In case you're not familiar with it, the idea here was to create a compact but more stylised interpretation of what a small estate could be. With a design based of course on the CLA four-door coupe. The first CLA Shooting Brake arrived back in 2015 and sold well enough to be reprised in second generation form when the MK2 CLA arrived in 2019. Here, looking at the third generation model announced in May 2025, introduced as the brand's very first all-electric estate but also available in full-Hybrid form. Let's take a closer look.

Engines and Tech Specword count: 361

The engineering here of course is the same as with the CLA four-door coupe and there are plenty of headlines. Starting with the EV model, in volume form badged the 'CLA 250+'. The technology on offer here is based around an 85kWh nickel-manganese-cobalt battery said to be capable of taking the car up to 469 miles between charges. Lots of clever engineering lies behind that attention-grabbing stat, a 272hp front-mounted motor working with a Porsche Taycan-like two-speed gearbox, rather than the usual single-speed EV transmission. The idea is that this provides a short first ratio for quick launches and extra efficiency at town speeds; and a much longer second ratio to improve consumption at a cruise. 0-62mph takes 6.8s on the way to 130mph. As you'd expect, the brand also offers a twin motor EV model, the CLA 350 4MATIC. This gets an extra 107bhp motor with a single-speed gearbox on its front axle, giving a combined output of 354hp, which cuts the 0-62mph sprint time to just 5.0s. Range remains impressive at 451 miles. If you're not quite ready for the EV switch, then you can talk to your dealer about the alternative of the brand's new self charging full-Hybrid engine in this car, which is mated to an equally new 8-speed eDCT auto gearbox. Mercedes makes no apology for the fact that the Hybrid CLA had to fit very much into the design parameters of the EV; the petrol version's 1.5-litre engine was specifically created to fit into the same front-end space as the EV's front motor. This four cylinder unit seems uncompromised as a result though, assisted by a little 1.3kWh battery energised by a 27bhp electric motor. These work together to send either 134bhp or 161bhp through the front wheels or, in the top 4MATIC version, 188bhp to all four wheels. Diesel-like economy is promised. For the future, there may be an entry-level 58kWh CLA EV with a lower price but less advanced LFP lithium-ion-phosphate cells and a shorter range (expect about 300 miles). And you can also expect a flagship Mercedes-AMG CLA 45 4MATIC+ EV with a pair of Yasa-developed axial flux motors developing over 500bhp.

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