Video 2017 Mercedes Benz CLA Don't Buy Warning | Auto Expert John Cadogan | Australia

You’re not really thinking about buying a Mercedes-Benz CLA, are you? Seriously?

In this report: one owner speaks out on what it’s really like to own the Mercedes-Benz CLA 250 Shooting Brake. Incredible. Such a gap between the promise in the marketing and the reality of ownership.

John Vanderzee is that unhappy owner … let’s call him ‘Mr Zee’ henceforth. He won’t mind. His e-mail to me was, seemingly, 100 feet long. Trust me - 100-foot-long e-mails are never glowing fonts of feel-good-ness.

Let’s detain ourselves momentarily with the vast emotional gymnastics here. The ‘about-face’ between the elation buying a $75,000 Benz, and the cascade of unsatisfactory events that lead to writing a horrible bastard like me a 100-foot email under the rubric of ‘gross dissatisfaction’. See if you think this represents the bipolar opposite of post-purchase euphoria:

“The car has spent at least two month at the dealer’s workshop out of the 10 months that we have had it and still no end to the saga. If we had known about the trouble that we have had to endure, we would never have bought the car. Do you know what the best thing we can do? Are they any lemon laws that can help us?”

Buying a Benz is - for many people - the ultimate automotive aspiration. Mercedes-Benz even bills itself as (quote) “the best, or nothing”. (There’s definitely no collective insecurity lurking behind the three-pointed star.)

Mercedes-Benz describes the CLA as (quote): “singular” and “unconforming”. The company says the interior is a (quote) “VIP area”. Mercedes further glowingly alleges (cue the vomit bag; quote) “Even Mother Nature is applauding”.

You could buy a very nice Lexus IS200t F Sport for exactly the same cash. Statistically, I never get complaints from Lexus owners. Lexus looks after its customers, overwhelmingly. And my experience is I get very few complaints about BMW, and when I do, shit happens. A frown turns upside-down.

That’s not the case with Mercedes.

On the CLA - fundamentally, it’s got everything you want in a premium Mercedes-Benz … such as being made in Hungary, and being front-wheel drive. According to Consumer Reports in the US, when it was released, the CLA was (quote) “actually 140 per cent worse than the average car” (unquote) - that’s in relation to its reliability, and it accounted for one of the main reasons why Mercedes-Benz plummeted to 24th spot from 14th in Consumer Reports’ reliability survey in that year.

People accuse me - routinely - of being biased against Mercedes-Benz. I repudiate that claim unreservedly. But I am very biased. I’m strenuously anti-shitbox, emphatically against poor customer support, pathologically opposed to bullshit, and, being an engineer, I’m appalled by bad design. If I don’t recommend a particular brand or car, that bias is informed by these fundamentals - not the brand.
Here’s what John Zee told me about his CLA:

“The car is unsafe, unreliable, and devalued as a result of their incompetence with a bad service history. It was bought as a promotional vehicle but it has been a letdown. We had to meet clients on the day it had to be towed away. It has been an embarrassment to potential clients who were with us when we had to wait 2 hours for a tow truck to arrive. Business is suffering as a result. It is not fit for the purpose it was purchased for.”

Mr Zee is somewhat angry because his $75,000 CLA is an unreliable shitheap. He’s also somewhat angry because of the ongoing incompetence in the service department. But the majority of his opprobrium is fuelled not because of these two factors, but because these things are occurring - and the car is a Mercedes-Benz.
That’s the credibility gap - between the promise and the delivery. It’s the Wonderbra effect … ultimately there’s a flop, and you just feel deflated. Mercedes-Benz is at the Wonderbra crossroads.

When you dare to scrawl the words ‘the best or nothing’ under your logo, the product and the way you support it sure as shit had better be the best. Because it’s a long way down from that pinnacle.

If that slogan is just bullshit - empty rhetoric - owners will quickly become anti-ambassadors. And anti-ambassadors inevitably reach out to people like me, here in the sewer. And then I’m going to reach out to 1.2 million people like you, every month. Because you need to know, and Mercedes-Benz needs to have its dirty laundry oxygenated.
If I were you, John Zee’s experience would serve as a warning, just in case you were thinking about striding purposefully towards the nearest Benz dealer, and intending to slap $75 grand of your own money on the counter any time soon.