2024 Mercedes-Benz CLE Cabriolet First Drive: Sporty Car, Not Sports Car

• All-new CLE Cabriolet is the drop-top version of the CLE coupe.
• Aircap and Airscarf tech make top-down driving at highway speeds comfortable.
• It's a sublime cruiser, especially with the new straight-six engine.

The upshot is the Cabrio begs to be driven top-down, and Mercedes encourages these melanoma flirtations with exclusive Cabrio tech. For chilly days, the Airscarf blows warm air on your neck, warm enough to feel hair-singeing on its highest setting. For hot days, the leather seats have a special anti-reflecting treatment that Mercedes says reduces the surface temperature by about 50 degrees compared to untreated seats. I'll have to take the company's word for the exact number, but even during a mini heat wave, no thighs were scorched. 

But the real special sauce is the Aircap. It consists of a retractable spoiler atop the windshield and a wind deflector positioned between the rear seat headrests. When deployed, it directs airflow over the top of the car, creating a bubble of calm air inside, even at freeway speeds with the windows up.

It works great, too. With the top down, Aircap active and windows up, it's possible to chat calmly with your seatmate even at extra-legal freeway speeds. Audio from the outstanding standard Burmester audio system is sharp and clear, and you can even conduct a phone call over Bluetooth. Your hair gets slightly tousled, but I never felt like my baseball cap would fly away. About the only downside to the Aircap is that from the outside the windshield-mounted spoiler looks a little goofy, but you can't see that from the driver's seat.

It's a vibe

Top-down cruising is where the CLE Cabriolet is in its element, especially in the evenings. Put the top down, activate the Aircap, let Edith Piaf sing La Vie en Rose to you, and the car's ambient lighting and smooth driving make nearly any road feel like the French Riviera. OK, that's hyperbole, but it's a sweet experience.

Not surprisingly, the CLE Cabriolet is best experienced in CLE 450 form with the excellent new 3.0-liter inline-six engine. With 375 horsepower and 369 lb-ft of torque, it makes the CLE Cabriolet feel surprisingly athletic when getting on freeways, and it pairs nicely with the smooth-shifting nine-speed automatic transmission. 

I got a chance to sample the CLE 300, powered by a 2.0-liter four-cylinder. It puts out 255 hp and 295 lb-ft of torque, which are healthy numbers on paper, but it has 4,200 pounds of convertible to haul around and subsequently feels relatively pokey. That nine-speed automatic doesn't do it any favors, emphasizing the four-cylinder's turbo lag before downshifting for a pass. To be fair, shifts are quicker when in Sport mode, but the inline-six is clearly the better powertrain.

Sporty-ish

The six-cylinder's power, the CLE's overall competence and the sporty design can make you think this big-ish convertible is an effective canyon carver, but alas, that's not part of its portfolio. The brake pedal feels soft, and the light steering lacks the kind of feel you want in a sporting machine. The tires grip, and the chassis feels well sorted, but the whole car is tuned for comfortable cruising, not tearing up and down mountain roads.

Dial the aggressiveness back, though, and the CLE Cabrio is downright delightful. The ride is comfortable, and with the fully insulated top up it's surprisingly quiet. The Sport mode holds gears a bit longer and shifts more aggressively, and gives the steering a bit of added heft, but that veneer of sportiness can't hide this car's underlying mission of delivering a comfortable and chill driving experience for two, or four in a pinch.

As a daily driver it's quite livable. The trunk is big enough for 14 grocery bags with the top up, and although it's a big-ish two-door it's still easy to get in and out in parking lots.

Too much tech?

I like the standard MBUX system in the CLE Cabrio, which uses its 11.9-inch center touchscreen to access, well, everything. The icons are big and easy to understand and touch, and overall it's simple to learn and understand. The screen even has two different tilt settings so that you can avoid glare on sunny days. Unfortunately, just about everything else in the interior is touch-sensitive as well, especially on the steering wheel, where it's far too easy to accidentally change a setting when simply making a turn. Buttons and knobs, please.

The MBUX system uses voice activation, listening for keywords like, "Hey, Mercedes." In theory it's nice, but if you talk to yourself in your car — and c'mon, we all do it — it picks up on keywords when you don't want it to, especially if you happen to mention the name of the automaker. It's a little frustrating, but it's not all bad. At one point I mumbled something and it switched songs on me. I said "cancel" out loud and it stopped, then I asked rhetorically, "Why are you always listening to me?" The car responded, "Because you make great decisions, for example, this car." Someone in Stuttgart has a sense of humor. 

My test car had the available Driver Assistance package, which adds adaptive cruise control and lane keeping assistance. It also adds active lane changing, which is a bit of a mixed bag. I like the suggestion mode, but the fully active assist will make odd decisions, sometimes putting you in a lane with slower-moving traffic. It's easy enough to override by simply holding the wheel firmly, but I feel like it needs one more round of software polish before it's ready for prime time.

Finally, on a couple of occasions the entire system including the digital instrument panel went black and rebooted itself. The car continued running fine, and the system reboot only took a few seconds, but it's disconcerting to suddenly see all of the screens go black. There were a couple of other glitches as well, such as the volume sometimes not responding to inputs. I'm willing to cut Mercedes a little slack on these early production vehicles but, then again, the underlying systems have been around for a while and the glitches were surprising.

What's it cost?

This is not a value purchase by any stretch, but taking all of the above into consideration, the new CLE goes a long way toward justifying its price tag. The CLE 300 starts at $65,500 including the $1,150 destination charge, and the CLE 450 starts off at $75,000. My test car came out to $84,270 with options. That's definitely up there, but you get a vibe of a car that's hard to find elsewhere.

Edmunds says

I wish the electronics weren't quite so intrusive, and it'd be nice if the CLE was more fun on twisty roads, but the undeniable pleasure of top-down crusising in nearly any weather, at any time of year, can't be overlooked — even if you don't live in LA.