I’m sailing past the brackish marshes and shifting tidewaters that substitute for borders between southeast Georgia and northeast Florida. The sky is royal, satiny blue; the wind buffets; the sun chafes. I am alone in Mercedes-Benz’s CLK320 Cabriolet, and the convertible top is down. Am I missing anything here? As a matter of fact, yes I am.
It takes me several miles to notice, but eventually I realize the car isn’t making a sound. There’s the seamless white noise of the wind, of course; but that’s all. The radio has been off since I pulled out of Fernandina, Fla., onto Highway A1A. There’s no exhaust note, no road noise. The suspension doesn’t thud over bumps; the chassis doesn’t flex or groan in corners. My hands don’t even squeak against the padded leather and polished wood of the steering wheel. I might as well be wafting along atop an Arabian magic carpet. This is a particularly uncanny sensation for one whose aural instincts have dominated his appreciation of motor sports and motoring throughout the years.
It is the presumed Grail Quest of every convertible manufacturer to design and build a chassis that will not flex and whine with every twist and turn of the road. Many have tried; most have failed. In particular, the longer-wheelbase four-seater, or cabriolet-style, convertible is plagued with bending stresses that not only creak insistently but also dilute the precise handling feel that typically characterizes a hard-top version of the same car.
Not so with M-B’s CLK320 “Cab,” as it is affectionately known. It is impossible to prove a negative, but I will assert one just the same: No noise is what the CLK Cab does best.
This praise is not meant to slight the car’s many other achievements, refinements, and grace notes. In fact, the integrity of the Cab’s overall driving personality mostly derives from the chassis tub’s inherent rigidity. As already suggested, handling is taut and precise specifically because deflections in road surface or inputs from the driver can be isolated by the car’s four-wheel independent suspension. Because the chassis is so rigid, the carefully tuned suspension is able to maintain the wheels’ proper relationships to the road without any distortions from a chassis that gives way unpredictably. But Mercedes-Benz’s achievement with the CLK drop-top is to create maximum rigidity with minimum mass. This preserves a light-footed nimbleness during cornering and makes it possible to sprint zero-to-60 in 7.7 seconds with just 215 horsepower.
Not that 215 HP is particularly lame, although it is certainly not best-in-class. The primary advantage of the CLK’s 3.2-liter, single-overhead-cam V6 isn’t so much lightning acceleration as relentless, unflagging thrust. The motor’s hearty 229 ft.-lbs. of torque prevail over an unnaturally broad powerband of from 3,000 rpm to 4,600 rpm. This alone explains the Cab’s crisp, “Yessir!” obedience to the driver’s every locomotive whim. Combined with M-B’s standard Touch Shift system of manual gear selection, this plucky V6 can hopscotch instantaneously between complementary personalities: One moment it’s an elegant open-air tourer shifting automatically between five forward gears; the next moment it’s a brash barnstormer inviting the driver to strafe the apexes of corners with precisely timed manual, albeit clutchless, shifts.
It must be said that a brawnier version of the CLK Cab does exist. If a 215-HP V6 doesn’t quite match a potential owner’s self-image, there is a CLK430 Cabriolet that produces 275 HP from its single-overhead-cam V8. Despite a marginally narrower powerband, that’s good enough for zero-to-60 in 6.9 seconds—and for commanding a base price of $56,500, compared with $48,900 (base) for the CLK320 Cab. The real champ of the two, however, is the baby brother, who accomplishes quite a lot of performance and style with (and for) quite a bit less.
Virtually unaltered mechanically since its debut as a ’99 model, the CLK320 Cab receives Mercedes’ TeleAid wireless safety system as standard equipment for 2001. Combining global positioning and cellular phone technology, TeleAid offers 911 and breakdown assistance at the touch of a button, and it alerts a dispatcher instantly in the event of an airbag-deploying crash. Even in the event of certain vehicle malfunctions, TeleAid can effect remote diagnostics via wireless uplink, as well as vehicle tracking in the event of theft.
For navigational assistance, an optional COMAND system ($2,035) integrates map-based GPS direction-finding with a premium sound system that combines AM/FM radio with cassette, six-CD changer, and hands-free phone. COMAND’s unorthodox panel controls are initially daunting; they’re a jumble of numerical keypad, disk/cassette controls, and a “compass & joystick” input device. M-B’s stated goal is to improve driver control over various information systems competing for his attention. Upon first meeting COMAND, however, one is more likely to groan in despair at the prospect of climbing a learning curve so steep. It will be, of course, the only groan one ever hears inside this car.
One will rarely be spared, however, the oohs and aahs of bystanders that routinely attend operation of the Cab’s auto-activated roof. Prospective owners should be forewarned that lowering and raising the top is no speedy process: It can take some 45 to 60 seconds for the four side windows to retract; the rear window to tilt; the boot to open; the roof to collapse into the well; the boot to close; and, if one chooses, for the side windows to raise automatically once again. Cleverly mechanical as it is, the operation of the Cab’s top is a gesture of languid leisure that subtly reinforces this car’s reason for being. It is a car for indulging the senses—sight, touch, particularly the sound of silence. It is a car for getting away from it all, rather than for rushing headlong into the breach. There are no raised voices or shaking fists when hailing this cab.
