Mercedes-Benz Shooting Brake unveiled

The Mercedes-Benz CLS Shooting Brake is a kick-arse looking wagon that is coming our way at the end of the year. It joins C-Class and E-Class carry-alls in the Benz wagon train but offers a cross between the swoopy style of CLS four door coupe and a wagon.

Funny enough, our own home-grown Holden Sportwagon runs along a similar theme -- though not quite as radical in the roof as the Shooting Brake.

That name, by the way, harks from days of old in Blighty (England) when the lord of the manor used specially built carriages as shooting platforms for pheasant and anything else that moved. Noice. Don’t think any Benz Shooting Brake customers will be doing the same unless they take an oxy torch to the roof and cut a turret hole in there.

It’s a five door device with five seats at a pinch and despite the low arcing roof, plenty of headroom in the rear seats once you’re there. The Shooting Brake could very well create a new niche as did the CLS eight years ago despite having scorn heaped on it by plenty of smarty pants.

There is no direct competitor at present but of course, that may change. Benz says it offers the best of both worlds  - coupe/wagon and will be favoured by punters who want something different from the traditional, boxy wagon.

It is quite roomy in the load space which is available with a gorgeous timber floor at about $5000 premium. It should be standard across the range as a defining feature of the vehicle. Naturally the rear seats fold to create a larger load space .

We don’t know which models will be sold here yet but they will likely reflect the current powertrain choices in say the E-class wagon meaning, a 2.1 litre turbo diesel 250d model, a 3.5-litre petrol V6 a V8 petrol and a CLS63AMG variant. Wot ho chaps. Anyone for a cucumber sandwich and a shot at those pheasant.

Daimler chairman Dr. Dieter Zetsche has previously pointed to the CLS Shooting Brake as the next step into the model segment created by the CLS, which has sold more than 170,000 globally since its launch.

"In 2004, Mercedes-Benz established a new vehicle segment with the four-door Coupe CLS and created a design icon," he says. "The CLS Shooting Brake underscores the leading role of Mercedes-Benz in regards of innovative passenger car concepts and design and that is exactly what the customers expect from us," he said.