Mercedes-Benz AMG CLA 45 Shooting Brake (2019-2023) Review & Prices

By slotting the devilishly powerful AMG 2.0-litre ’45’ turbo engine into the CLA Shooting Brake estate, Mercedes has created that classically German thing — a practical and useful estate car that can peel your eyelids off with its performance. It’s like someone stuck a rocket booster onto a branch of B&Q.

It’s a smart-looking car too. Technically, it’s not a shooting brake at all (if it were, it would only have three doors) but that sounds posher than ‘estate’ and with the drooping rear end and compact shape, the hot CLA certainly looks the part of the posh country house car. The AMG body kit adds some serious extra visual muscle, as does the ‘Panamericana’ radiator grille with its shiny vertical slats.

Under the bonnet is one of the wonders of modern machinery. Quite how Mercedes and AMG have managed to squeeze 421hp from a simple 2.0-litre turbocharged four-cylinder engine, and done so reliably, is really quite the thing. An automatic gearbox is standard, as is 4MATIC four-wheel drive, and so the CLA 45 AMG can fling itself to 62mph in just 4.1 seconds. It also sounds pretty spectacular by four-cylinder engine standards, although if you fancy something more tuneful, try Audi’s five-cylinder RS3 instead.

To help keep all of that power and potential under control, as well as the four-wheel drive there’s a clever rear differential which can send just the right amount of power to whichever rear wheel can best handle it, and there is adaptive suspension too.

The CLA is a bit of an old design now, and that really shows in the cabin. There’s the now-familiar MBUX digital dashboard, which houses two screens — one for instruments and one for infotainment — under a common shroud that stretches out across the dashboard like a bootleg iPad. The on-screen menus are easy enough to use, helped by the fact that this CLA still has physical air conditioning controls, but you can sense the car’s age in some of the software, and in the cheapness of some of the cabin’s materials. The column stalks are particularly cheap-feeling.

It is quite a practical car, though. In spite of the fact that Mercedes bills the four-door version of the CLA as a ‘coupe’ it’s fairly roomy in the back seat, and the boot of this Shooting Brake estate version, even with all the AMG bits and pieces like that clever rear differential, can hold up to 505 litres of luggage, which makes this CLA a match for the bigger BMW M3 Touring.

If that sounds like your kind of thing, find out how much you could save with Carwow’s Mercedes deals. You can also browse the latest used Mercedes-AMG CLA 45 S Shooting Brake models or check out other used Mercedes models. You can also sell your car with Carwow.

You’ll pay almost £60,000 for the CLA 45 AMG Shooting Brake which is a heck of a lot of money for a compact model such as this. However, that has to be taken in context. The CLA 45 is still some £30,000 cheaper than a BMW M3 Touring, and as noted above it actually has a boot that’s just as big. It’s also slightly more affordable than either the Audi RS3 Sportback hatchback or four-door saloon, and it’s considerably more practical and useful than either of those. You could also consider the VW Golf R Estate, which is considerably more affordable than the AMG, and although it’s around 90hp down on the Mercedes, it has an even bigger boot.