Mercedes CLA Ceramic Coating 

Mercedes CLA Ceramic Coating on small cars are big business for Mercedes-Benz Australia, which this week launched the fifth member of its compact car family — the CLA Shooting Brake. 

Car Make: Mercedes

Model: CLA – Shooting Brake

Detail: New Car Paint Protection Preparation

  • High-Pressure Rinse
  • Foam Cannon Rinse using PH Neutral Shampoo 
  • Shampoo & Wash of Exterior 
  • Wheels, arches cleaned with Citrus Degreaser
  • Full paintwork clay-bar, removes all embedded contaminants inc. iron particles)
  • Paintwork Correction to Stage 2 Level
  • IPA Wipe-down – ensuring all oils/polish/wax are removed for proper bonding.
  • Air Dry followed by Hand dried Chamois (Lint Free)
  • Followed by hand dried “deep pile” micro fiber terry towels
  • Paint Protection Applied using Exclusive Coatings
  • Full Infrared Technology to Cure Coating in House
  • Glass Coatings with 9H Hardness
  • Chemical resistance
  • Tyres Conditioned & Dressed

It joins the CLA Coupe (really a sedan — Mercedes-Benz is rather fond of borderline pretentious names for its body-styles), as well as the A-Class hatch, B-Class MPV and GLA crossover SUV in its small-car family, each of which uses the same architecture. 

Mercedes CLA Ceramic Coating or Mercedes-Benz calls this front- and all-wheel-drive architecture MFA — Modular Front-wheel-drive Architecture — and the vehicles spun from it account for about 35.0 per cent of its total sales this year, or more than 40.0 per cent if you exclude commercial vehicles. 

We mentioned ‘big business’ before. For all its applications, that tag does not belong to the traditional wagon at present, which more than ever is being utterly usurped in the battle for buyers’ hearts, minds and wallets by SUVs that ride higher and look tougher.

Despite that wagon body, it only has a claimed 25 litres of extra storage space over the sedan if you’re using the rear seats, at 495L (7L more than a B-Class). But flip them (almost flat, but not quite), and you get 1354L. In comparison, the 72mm longer C-Class Estate houses 490L/1510L — a difference not as marked as we expected, frankly.

You still wouldn’t call the CLA Shooting Brake the most practical offering. A Volkswagen Golf wagon — sorry for the VW reference, but it’s just a context marker — is about the same length, but stores 605/1620L. That’s 266L extra. There’s also a fairly small loading aperture that makes this resemble more of a stretched hatch than a wagon proper.