Mercedes-AMG CLE 53 review

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Lower-rung AMG gains butch looks and big power. Can it stick it to the BMW M4?

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It’s been a while since Mercedes-AMG model designations had any bearing on engine capacities, but we thought we’d figured this out, right? 63 is the full-house one, 53 is basically an AMG Line pack on the biggest engine.

In comes the Mercedes-AMG CLE 53, looking all butch with its wider wheel arches. The spec sheet mentions a rear-wheel-drive-only drift mode (it’s four-wheel drive as standard). A combined 443bhp and 4.2sec to 62mph sound pretty full-house as well. Sure, it’s slower than a BMW M4, but super-coupé performance has well and truly jumped the shark anyway, so that’s just a question of how unusable you want your performance to be. At £73,075, it’s cheaper too.

There is going to be a 63 version, which will reportedly have a V8 but it remains to be seen whether it will be a heavy, complicated plug-in hybrid. At that point, this mild-hybrid, inline-six Mercedes-AMG CLE 53 might seem like the purer, simpler driver’s car, in as much as you can even apply those words to a two-tonne, mild-hybrid car with variable four-wheel drive and four-wheel steering.

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DESIGN & STYLING

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02 Mercedes AMG CLE 53 2024 review front driving

With the CLE, Mercedes has amalgamated the old C-Class Coupé and E-Class Coupé – and their convertible derivatives – into one model, just like it used to do in the 1990s and early 2000s with the CLK.

Compared with the standard Mercedes CLE, the 53 gets a new front bumper, an AMG-style Panamericana grille, a large rear spoiler and decorative diffuser.

Thanks to wider wheel arches, it's also 58mm wider at the front and 75mm wider at the rear, enhancing its aggressive look.

Further back, the 53 gets AMG-specific door mirrors and a more aggressive rear end, thanks to a restyled bumper and lip spoiler. 

Mechanically, it’s more of a halfway house between the full-fat AMGs and the standard Mercedes. It develops 442bhp, but does it from a breathed-on standard Mercedes engine, rather than a full hand-made Affalterbach product. The twin-turbo M 256M engine is very similar to what you get in the Mercedes CLE 450, but gets twin turbos increasing boost pressure by 0.4 bar to 1.5 bar, as well as an electric compressor that can provide boost before the regular turbos have spooled up. This compressor, as well as a 23bhp electric motor in the gearbox, are powered off the 48V mild-hybrid system.

The engine drives through the standard Mercedes nine-speed ‘TCT’ torque-converter automatic, rather than the racier ‘MCT’ AMG 'box with its wet start-up clutch.

The CLE 53 has fully variable four-wheel drive that, if optioned right, includes a rear-drive-only drift mode. There’s 2.5deg of rear-wheel steering and what Mercedes calls AMG Ride Control, which includes AMG-tuned adaptive dampers with coil springs.

Where things get really interesting is if you option the £7500 Pro Performance Pack. This adds a bunch of cosmetic carbonfibre trinkets, but more importantly bucket seats that lower the driving position, dynamic engine mounts, the aforementioned drift mode and a Race drive mode with a more rear-biased 4WD setting.

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INTERIOR

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09 Mercedes AMG CLE 53 2024 review dash IV driving

Inside, there’s a choice of two aesthetics. Our Night Edition test car had the usual lashings of carbonfibre and an Alcantara steering wheel, while the standard Premium version has a classier and more subdued aesthetic with more leather and wood trim.

Both versions come with standard sports seats, which are supportive and firmly padded like all Mercedes seats, but give quite a high driving position for a car that presents itself as a performance coupé. We tried the upgraded AMG Performance seats that come as part of the Pro Performance Pack on the international launch, and they do give a more purposeful seating position.

Within the large central touchscreen, Mercedes has incorporated an AMG Performance menu that displays various forms of vehicle data, such as speed and g-force. There's also an on-screen IWC-branded watch that can be used as a race timer for track driving.
Sam Phillips
Staff Writer

Otherwise, it’s the usual Mercedes deal: generally nice, but with some iffy materials here and there. It’s very screen-heavy with few buttons, but the interfaces are well thought through and pretty easy to use.

What helps in that respect are the satellite controllers on the steering wheel, which let you quickly switch between driving modes and adjust their various parameters.

The CLE 53 Cabriolet offers the same luxurious driving environment peppered with sporting touches.

Its new multi-layer fabric roof opens in just 20 seconds at road speeds of up to 37mph and operates silently, thanks to a new electric mechanism.

With the roof down, there’s 285 litres of boot space, increasing to 375 litres when it’s closed, with the option to extend luggage capacity via a 60/40-split folding rear seat.

ENGINES & PERFORMANCE

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17 Mercedes AMG CLE 53 2024 review engine

On start-up, the engine doesn’t have much of a bark despite the four exhaust tips, and in fact, being a mild hybrid, it’s quite keen to shut itself down at traffic lights.

There’s plenty of performance, that’s for sure, and it’s accompanied by a silky inline-six voice that’s less raspy than a BMW M4’s but smoother and more layered than an M440i’s. Going up through the drive modes doesn’t massively impact the engine sound, apart from adding a slightly puerile upshift fart.

I prefer the CLE 53's smooth six-cylinder howl over the BMW M440i's, which becomes a bit reedy at the top end, and the M4's, which is very gruff throughout. It doesn't shout 443bhp, though.
Illya Verpraet
Road Tester

The nine-speed auto shifts nice and quickly, but in another clue that this might not be a true-blue M4 rival, it’s actually the standard torque-converter unit, rather than the multi-plate clutch AMG version. One result is that if you haven’t pulled the right-hand paddle 1000rpm before the redline, the gearbox will let the engine run into a soft limiter before delivering a slow, slurred upshift.

RIDE & HANDLING

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17 Mercedes AMG CLE 53 2024 review front cornering

The ride in comfort mode is no worse than on any mainstream Mercedes. For the avoidance of doubt: that’s a positive. There’s a bit of an edge to the low-speed ride and some road noise from the fat tyres, but it’s much more isolating than a BMW M4, which is pretty punishing for something that’s an everyday car for most owners.

There’s definitely more meat and immediacy to the 53’s steering compared with a normal CLE. The rear-wheel steer helps with the latter, but it’s a fairly mild system, capable of just 2.5deg of angle. In combination with a variable steering ratio at the front, it has allowed Mercedes to make the steering very quick: less than two turns lock to lock. Despite that, it doesn’t feel nervous, but it’s no great communicator. You largely just have to trust that the fat 265-section Michelin S5 tyres at the front will grip, which, in fairness, they tend to do.

More challenging roads definitely require a move up to the sport mode of the suspension, as the car can feel a bit loose otherwise. So configured, you get a car that is precise, grippy and flows nicely. But it doesn’t have the ultra-tight damping you do get in the Mercedes-AMG C63, or the rear bias to its four-wheel drive system that would give it a playful side. You can just about get a wiggle from the rear axle if you get hard on the throttle out of a tight corner, but overall it is set up pretty safe.

The Cabriolet feels much the same, and therefore very agile by open-top standards, although you do feel the increased kerb weight (2035kg). With the roof down, there’s minimal wind buffeting up to around 60mph. Beyond that, it gets quite blustery. The tuned exhaust, meanwhile, is omnipresent.

Mercedes-AMG CLE 53 news

Mercedes-AMG CLE 53 cabriolet guns for BMW M440i
Mercedes-AMG CLE 53 cabriolet guns for BMW M440i
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MPG & RUNNING COSTS

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01 Mercedes AMG CLE 53 Cabriolet 2024 review front driving lead

Prices for the CLE 53 Premium start at £73,075, while the Night Edition Premium Plus starts at £78,825. That makes it significantly cheaper than the BMW M4 but £10,000 more expensive than the BMW M440i. It must be said that if you option up an M440i to the same level as the basic CLE 53, the gap becomes really quite small.

Only the Night Edition Premium Plus model can be specced with the Pro Performance Pack, which costs an extra £7500.

Later this year, Mercedes will also add a convertible version of the CLE to the range, including the CLE 53.

We have not had enough time in one to get an accurate reading on fuel economy, but from our testing the CLE 53 should be able to return over 30mpg on a gentle motorway run, but that figure drops quickly when you make use of the performance it offers.

VERDICT

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06 Mercedes AMG CLE 53 Cabriolet 2024 review front static

Despite its pumped-up looks and mighty performance, the CLE 53 is not a direct M4 challenger. Is that a bad thing? We don’t think so. It’s only slightly more expensive than a BMW M440i, offers a chunk more performance and looks the business. The Performance Pack might add a further dimension still, but even as is, it feels worthier of its AMG badging than the M440i of its M badging.

And so Mercedes offers a gentle cruiser with a smooth, powerful and charismatic six-cylinder engine in the CLE 450, but without too many look-at-me sporty addenda. There’s a mildly sporting AMG-lite in the CLE 53, and presumably an all-out performance car in the upcoming CLE 63. Maybe Mercedes’ line-up makes sense, after all. Just don’t expect to glean the engine size from the model name.

Sam Phillips

Sam Phillips
Title: Staff Writer

Sam joined the Autocar team in summer 2024 and has been a contributor since 2021. He is tasked with writing used reviews and first drives as well as updating top 10s and evergreen content on the Autocar website. 

He previously led sister-title Move Electric, which covers the entire spectrum of electric vehicles, from cars to boats – and even trucks. He is an expert in new car news, used cars, electric cars, microbility, classic cars and motorsport. 

Sam graduated from Nottingham Trent University in 2021 with a BA in Journalism. In his final year he produced an in-depth feature on the automotive industry’s transition to electric cars and interviewed a number of leading experts to assess our readiness for the impending ban on the sale of petrol and diesel cars.

Illya Verpraet

Illya Verpraet Road Tester Autocar
Title: Road Tester

As part of Autocar’s road test team, Illya drives everything from superminis to supercars, and writes reviews, comparison tests, as well as the odd feature and news story. 

Much of his time is spent wrangling the data logger and wielding the tape measure to gather the data for Autocar’s eight-page road tests, which are the most rigorous in the business thanks to independent performance, fuel consumption and noise figures.