Driven #41:- Mercedes CLS 350CGi

 
A customer of ours lives in a beautiful, detatched 1930s house in a leafy part of Berkshire. It’s on a big plot, has glorious period details and a spacious interior layout. It’s, basically, my dream house; except for the small detail that it’s being demolished later this year.

A wealthy man, he has decided that, as nice as his house is, he could do better. He owns the land, so he can choose what to put on it; probably some identikit catalogue mansion, straight out of Footballers Wives. Sadly, as much as the old adage rings true not to fix what ain’t broke, sometimes change for the sake of change is inevitable. So to the Mercedes-Benz CLS.

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The Monster Retreats.

The Automotive world has a rich history of imitation, emulation, inspiration and outright forgery. Back in the seventies the Rover SD1 famously borrowed aspects of the Ferrari 365GTB/4, a successful endeavour which led to one of the most striking regular cars of the decade. At around that time De Tomaso were obviously dead keen on the Jaguar XJ6 as the lines of the Deauville demonstrated, and fifteen years later Toyota realised that the only way to beat the Germans at their own game was to base their product on a tried and tested formula. They chose the Mercedes S-Class and the resulting brand, Lexus, has been spectacularly successful.

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