Mercedes CLA saloon - Reliability & safety

Mercedes CLA reliability won't be known until it has been in the hands of customers for at least a year. A strong safety result for the A-Class bodes well for the closely related CLA.

Mercedes CLA reliability

The CLA was redesigned from the ground up for 2019, so it'll be some time before any reliability issues are widely known. However, the CLA does feature a number of engines, gearboxes and features that are already proven within the Mercedes range. The manufacturer's 28th place (out of 30 brands) in our 2020 Driver Power survey is a cause for concern but the brand did at least score well for interior design and build quality. Owners also told us running costs and servicing were expensive and 16.5% of them reported a fault in the first year.

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Safety

Independent body Euro NCAP has conducted a crash-test for the Mercedes CLA and awarded it a five-star result. It's particularly reassuring given the adult and child occupant scores were 96% and 91% respectively, while the mark for pedestrian safety was also a high 91%.

Key technologies like automatic emergency braking and lane-keeping assistance are all included as standard, while traffic-sign recognition comes with the AMG Line Premium Plus version. Augmented reality sat nav is also available, using a windscreen camera to show real images in the media display with superimposed directions.