Mercedes-Benz CLA

The Mercedes-Benz CLA-Class is a new compact executive car four-door sedan based on the platform of the Mercedes-Benz A-Class compact car and the B-Class compact car,  formally launched at the January 2013 North American International Auto Show. The car was previewed by the 2012 Concept Style Coupe.

There was a time when automakers didn’t want the public to know what they were to be debuting at auto shows—we might argue that time continues to be now, but we digress. Manufacturers strived to savor the plaudits that come along with a well-received reveal that was a tremendously kept secret until the moment prior to lifting the sheet. And yet, with all the subtly of a sledgehammer, Mercedes-Benz has made sure everyone has gotten a good look at its upcoming CLA-class four-door sedan.

We saw it in a Super Bowl ad. Mercedes posted its own spy photos of it on its Facebook page. And now, as Motor Trend first reported, the Stuttgart-based brand has announced that the CLA45 AMG will debut at the New York auto show this March. Perhaps staying mum isn’t really all that important when you’re standing atop Benz’s empire, noting that the CLA won’t have any direct competition until Audi can get its A3 sedan into production. In fact, Mercedes is so eager to get people talking about its new compact four-door coupe that it’s offering to fly contest winners to New York to witness the car’s unveiling and throw $500 and hotel accommodations at them, too.

Or, perhaps, staying mum really isn’t all that important when you consider that the CLA45 AMG will look largely the same as the CLA250 the brand debuted at the Detroit show in January. It’s especially unimportant when the folks at Mercedes and AMG already have told anyone who would listen about the car’s 2.0-liter turbo four making in the realm of 350 horsepower and producing 295 lb-ft of torque, or its seven-speed dual-clutch automatic, or its all-wheel-drive system. So while the CLA45 AMG won’t be much of a surprise when the sheet comes off its curvaceous flanks next month, we’ll continue to clamor for it—largely because of its Affalterbach upbringing—as if it were something we’d never seen before.

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