A trio of Mercedes-Benz CLS Shooting Brakes Spotted Winter Testing

Our Teamspeed spies catch a trio of shooting brakes this morning during cold-weather testing as we get closer to the official reveal of the new CLS variant. As we have previous reported, the first generation of Mercedes‘ CLS seemingly pioneered a new market with an automotive style that ignited controversial discussions amongst car enthusiasts: The four-door Coupe.

Now that this niche has found many customers and many new competitors like Porsche’s Panamera or Volkswagen’s Passat CC entered the market, Mercedes pushed their luck with another unusual variation of the Coupe-subject by presenting a concept car of a CLS-Estate-version in 2010.

The reactions were quite positive and the car got the green light for production. The final car, called CLS Shooting Break, will be revealed in 2012 and first test drives already started. Our exclusive spy video of a slightly camouflaged prototype show that the car won’t differ too much from the concept car, only the front nose and rear tail section receives minor cosmetic changes.

The range of available engines won’t differ much from the current four-door-CLS which means four and six cylinder diesel and petrol units producing 204 to 408 hp. We hear the 571 hp CLS 63 AMG is highly unlikely to be available as a Shooting Break version.

Sales will start in summer 2012 and the prices are expected to be slightly higher than those of the Coupe-version.