2014 MERCEDES-BENZ CLA-CLASS CLA 250 4MATIC COUPE 4D

Presented by Olympic Auto Sales,

Atlanta’s premier Luxury Buy Here Pay Here Dealership.

The 2014 Mercedes-Benz CLA-Class sedan is the Germany luxury brand's first-ever front-wheel-drive car in the U.S. market--and it's priced, styled, and engineered to grab eyeballs and younger buyers before competitors Audi and BMW have competing products ready. The Audi A3 sedan will arrive next year, and BMW will offer its riposte a year or two after that, but for today, the CLA has that market niche to itself among the Germans.

Instead, it goes head to head with the likes of the well-meaning but unimpressive Acura ILX, the handsome, supple and quiet Buick Verano, and--in its hotter CLA45 AMG version--the BMW 1-Series. The Verano and ILX have base prices below $30,000 and lots of luxury features like the newest Benz. But neither has anything like the prestige of the Mercedes badge. The BMW does, but its M edition is gone, on an untimely time-out.

With its stubbier shape and less favorable aerodynamics, the CLA is still as sleek as it can be: with a coefficient of drag of just 0.23, Mercedes claims it's the most slippery shape in the production-car world. You can see the aerodynamic tricks in the lower reaches of the front end, where big air intakes shape the airflow, or the thin parentheses that let it escape at the tail.

In the CLA, the compact dimensions don't affect the front passengers nearly as much as they do those in the back. The CLA 250's front seats are Recaro-like in their shape--and they're good ones, with great firm bolsters around the back and on the sides of the bottom cushion. They're covered in a combination of MB-Tex synthetic leather and cloth on Edition 1 models and all MB-Tex or all leather on all other CLAs, depending on your wallet. The seats are adjustable for rake and position, with power adjustment for the driver and manual for the passenger seat, which moves via levers and wheels in the VW idiom. That's to say, it's a reach to get to the wheel that adjusts seatback angle.

*This vehicle is Certified Pre-Owned and is eligible for our third party warranty program.