Have you seen the new Mercedes-Benz CLE? It is a real, low, two-door coupe, and therefore a type of car that we will rarely encounter in 2023. Still, I am not happy, because the CLE is not stylish enough for me.
And no, now don’t joke about GLE coupés and matte black AMG GT 4-Doors. You may also find it styleless – I myself refrain from commenting – but I am now talking about literally styleless. B-pillarless, to be precise. Mercedes has a long history with the ‘hardtop coupe’, or a coupe without a middle window pillar. To be clear: we are talking about a two-door model with a fixed roof, but without a fixed window pillar between the front and rear side windows. In such a case, all the windows can be opened, resulting in one large, open ‘hole’ that beautifully reveals the entire interior.
This body style was once quite popular, starting in the 1950s, but Mercedes has held on to it longer than anyone else. With the W114 coupé from the sixties and seventies it was still fairly normal, but with the successor C123 it started to become a bit rarer. However, Mercedes continued and also offered the C124 as a ‘hardtop coupe’, until the second half of the nineties. And then… then it stopped. At least, that’s what we thought, because the first CLK just got a B-pillar as a coupe. That car also resembled the new CLE in concept, because just like that car it was somewhat between C-class and E-class. However, with the second-generation CLK, which appeared in 2003, Mercedes corrected that ‘mistake’. The later CLK did it as a coupé without a B-pillar, which made it completely unique on this side of the turn of the century.
Mercedes Benz C123
That is, until the E-class coupe made its appearance. Mercedes split the CLK again in 2009 into a two-door C-class and a two-door E-class, with only the latter being a true, unstyled coupe. The E-class coupe also owes that strange, third side window to this. It serves a purely practical purpose, because without the ‘cutting up’ of the glass, the then huge rear side window would simply not fit into the rear screen. This diamond came back on the second generation E-class coupé and shows how much Mercedes wanted to design these cars without a B-pillar. After all, the third diamond could have been easily prevented by adding such a style, but instead the Germans opted for this unique, complicated solution.
And now the mathematicians seem to have won over the designers again. The CLE has a thick, muddy B-pillar and only two window buttons, with which Mercedes puts an end to the nicer, styleless solution for the second time. Fortunately, there will also be a convertible…
– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl