Mercedes-Benz CLA-Class vs Tesla Model 3

What's the difference?

The new AMG C 43 may lack the drama and excitement we’ve come to expect from the German performance brand, but that doesn’t mean it’s a bad car. Yes, it could be more extroverted and the ride could be improved, but this is still a sharp-looking sports sedan with loads of punch.

This is a car that speaks to its times, with ever-stricter emissions regulations making it harder and harder for car companies to produce loud, wild and charismatic cars. So Mercedes-AMG has worked within those boundaries and come up with a car that retains at least some of those core elements that has made the brand so desirable over the years.

Note: CarsGuide attended this event as a guest of the manufacturer, with accommodation and meals provided.

The Model 3 Performance is one of those cars that’s undeniably impressive in almost every way, and hugely fast in absolutely every way, and yet can somehow still leave you feeling slightly cold. Or at least damp with fear sweat.

It’s not my kind of sports car, but if you love speed, and EVs, and Tesla, you’re gong to think it’s the Queen Bee’s knees.

Publishers: Please place the following in BOLD after the verdict:

Note: CarsGuide attended this event as a guest of the manufacturer, with travel, accommodation and meals provided.

Mercedes has created something of a problem for itself with its decision to introduce AMG styling packages for the majority of its range, including the C-Class.

It means the C 43 has to walk a fine line between looking like a unique AMG model, rather than just a C300 with a bodykit and not out-doing the C63.

To that end it has AMG’s now familiar grille with vertical bars, the unique and complex-looking 20-inch alloy rims and a small lip spoiler on the boot. But otherwise it is surprisingly understated for an AMG, lacking the more obvious and muscular stance of previous AMG offerings.

Inside, there’s a similar theme, with the typical Mercedes-Benz luxury appointments but with a sportier, AMG twist. The steering wheel is chunky and comes with AMG branding, metallic shift paddles and a pair of rotary dials/buttons that allow you to alter the various drive modes and settings.

The one on the right allows you to switch between the pre-set Comfort, Sport, Sport+ and Individual modes, while the one on the left can scroll between the various individual aspects to tailor the settings to the conditions.

In typical modern fashion the design is tech-laden, with a digital display for the instrument panel (that can be switched between various graphics) and a large, tablet-style central multimedia touchscreen that controls the majority of the car’s non-driving functions.

Tesla’s design folks waxed long and loud about how they’d finally been able to visually lift and separate this Performance Model 3 from the basic one and they point to the new front and rear fascias, more aggressive styling, aerodynamic flicks, integrated cooling ducts, rear diffuser and carbon-fibre spoiler, which are there not only to look good, but to to “optimise lift balance and high-speed stability”.

Now, I’ll grant you it’s better than a normal Model 3, and that we were regularly approached by excited Tesla fans asking “is this the NEW PERFORMANCE OH MY GOD I WANT ONE NOW?!?"

But honestly, I still think it’s a bit subtle, and that includes the strange little 'Performance' sticker/badge on the rear, which does look a lot like the Ludicrous symbol that Elon loves, from the awful movie Spaceballs, but Tesla staff insist it’s not, nor is it Plaid. 

Clearly, the design tweaks are there for a reason, and train spotters will note the differences immediately, but it’s still just not the most exciting car to look at, nor is it anywhere near as exciting to behold as it is to drive.

The new C-Class has grown slightly in size compared to the model it replaces, most notably with a 26mm increase in the wheelbase which you can feel in the cabin.

The front seat space is good, with excellent adjustability for the power-adjustable seats and steering column. I had no trouble finding my ideal seating position which makes for a more enjoyable and uncompromised driving experience.

Rear space is a bit tighter (which is typical for this segment/size of vehicle), but thankfully the standard seats do have very deep sculpting in the backs which allow for more knee space and foot room.

However, at approximately 180cm (six-foot), I wouldn’t like to sit behind my seating position for long periods as my knees were touching the seat back, and headroom is compromised with the panoramic glass roof.

In terms of small item storage there’s a lidded console box in between the front seats as well as a pair of cupholders and a small tray where you can place your mobile phone.

It’s worth noting, though, that early examples of the C 43 in Australia do not have a wireless smartphone charging pad, with that reportedly being introduced from February production.

While that’s good news, it’s not really competitive in this day and age to offer a car costing six-figures without such technology.

There’s also only a single USB-C power outlet in the front, which is another disappointment, but there is a pair in the back.

Mercedes does win some points back for a respectable 455-litre boot, which has a nice wide load opening that will make packing luggage easier.

Inside, the big news is the new seats. Tesla was happy to admit the pews fitted to the previous Performance just weren’t up to the job of holding humans in place when applying so much G force. 

The new 'Sport Seats' feature enhanced side cushioning and side bolsters for better lateral support during dynamic driving. And they can also be heated and ventilated. 

Elsewhere, there’s some carbon-fibre trim on top of the dash, with a Tesla-first weave pattern to further help the Performance stand out within the Model 3 line-up.

Other than that, it’s pretty standard Tesla sedan, which will be familiar if you’ve ever caught an Uber in Los Angeles. Spartan, minimalist, slightly cheap-feeling.

As for the practicality of the tech, I'm still against the giant 15-inch tablet-style touchscreen, for everything, the replacement of an indicator stalk with buttons and not having a speedo right in front of your eyes, where you need it.

Tesla says the price for the Model 3 Performance will be "starting at" $80,900, plus on-road costs. There's no word on whether there will be different spec levels and the company does not like answering questions or providing information.

What we also know about Tesla is that the price quoted could move down, or up, at any time, quite randomly, so if phrases like "residual value" or "depreciation" are of interest to you, it can be a challenging brand.

That side swipe aside, this sounds like astonishingly good value for this much performance from your Model 3 Performance. A Hyundai Ioniq 5 N would give it run for fun and involvement, if not brand fans, but it's $111,000, while a Porsche Taycan kicks off at $164,000 (it is a lot more car for the money, but it might struggle to keep up with this Tesla, at least in base model form).

In terms of equipment, it's pretty much standard Model 3 fare, other than the fast bits and a spot of carbon here and there.

You get 'Autopilot' included, of course, but you can't use all of its 'Full Self Driving functionality' on Australian roads. Not yet, anyway.

The biggest talking point about this new car is the engine, with AMG downsizing from the old C 43’s six-cylinder to a 2.0-litre four-cylinder turbocharged petrol engine.

But it’s not just any turbocharged four-pot, because it is fitted with technology that Mercedes claims has been inspired directly from its Formula One team.

While the F1 team engine facility is based in England, this engine was designed and developed by the Mercedes-AMG team at its Affalterbach headquarters, but the concept of the electric turbocharger reportedly comes from the engine that powered Lewis Hamilton to multiple world championships.

The electric exhaust gas turbocharger - to give it its official name - uses a small electric motor on the turbocharger shaft to spin up the blades without having to wait for any exhaust gases to pass through it first.

To power the electric turbo the C 43 is equipped with a mild-hybrid 48-volt electrical system.

Mercedes claims this means reduced lag and improved throttle response for a sportier driving experience. 

It also helps make this small engine produce big amounts of performance, with AMG extracting 300kW of power and 500Nm of torque from this 2.0-litre, which is more power than the previous six-cylinder C 43 managed.

The engine is paired to a nine-speed multi-clutch transmission, which isn’t a dual-clutch with a pair of clutches operating on every second gear ratio, but instead uses a “wet start-off clutch” for better take-offs and smoother shifting on the move (at least in theory).

Power is sent to the road via all four wheels thanks to Mercedes’ 4Matic all-wheel drive system.

If you’ve ever driven the previous Model 3 Performance you’ll know that it could well have come with Space X badging (arguably Elon’s more impressive engineering achievement), because it really did thrust rather than accelerate.

But this time the engineers wanted to go all out. Customers appreciated the incremental performance they got from the last Model 3 Performance version, but they told Tesla they wanted more.

With many enthusiasts among Tesla's engineering and development team, they looked to unlock the performance potential of the platform.

So, that meant a whole lot more madness and torque thump. It comes from a new Performance 4DU, an all-new drive unit - featuring an entirely new rear motor that uses bar-winding technology - unlocking 22 per cent more continuous power, 32 per cent more peak power and 16 per cent higher peak torque delivery. 

Overall figures are 380kW and 740Nm, but looking at them written down, they seem big, yet not as big as they feel in this car, as it’s shoving you from a standing start to 100km/h in three seconds flat. 

It feels faster. Sick-making fast, even.

Despite the smaller engine you can hardly call the C 43 miserly, with a claimed combined urban/highway cycle rating of 9.1-litres per 100km. That’s only a 0.2L/100km improvement over the old six-cylinder.

On test, which included a return trip from Sydney to Bathurst via motorways and some dynamic back road driving, we saw a return of 11.8L/100km on the car's onboard computer.

While hardly hybrid-worrying, it’s impressive to think that driven modestly, such a potent engine can return a single-digit fuel figure.

Despite being heavier and gruntier, Tesla claims the new Performance Model 3 manages to be more efficient than the one it replaces, albeit delivering just a two per cent reduction in energy consumption. Claimed energy usage is 16.7 kWh/100km.

Tesla claims a total range of 528km on the WLTP, which is obviously going to drop if you drive it the way its makers clearly intended.

Using a Tesla Supercharger, you can add 228km in 15 minutes and... that's all Tesla will tell us. There are no official figures available for how long a full charge takes, on either a Tesla charge or a home wallbox of your own.

Let’s start with the good news. The new Mercedes-AMG C 43 is a quick car. The engine may be small in size but the electric turbocharger does its thing and provides plenty of punch.

You can get a performance boost, too, thanks to the belt-driven starter generator, which acts as a mild hybrid and gives you a surge of 10kW for a brief period if you need a sudden burst of extra speed.

The chassis is well-sorted, too, at least from a dynamic point-of-view. The rear-wheel steering can provide up to 2.5 degrees of turning, which improves handling at speed and manoeuvrability when parking.

However, there are some less-impressive elements to the C 43, too. The obvious one is the drama, or rather the lack thereof.

As I said at the beginning, the C 43 has never been as wild or raucous as the V8-powered C 63, but when you buy an AMG there’s a rightful expectation that it will provide some thrills.

The C 43 simply doesn’t have that character about it. Yes, it’s fast, but it produces that speed with efficiency rather than excitement.

And it’s not an engine size problem, because even the 2.0-litre four-cylinder A 35 and CLA 35 offer more ‘wow factor’ than the C 43.

Yes, the engine makes noise under acceleration (and it can be altered between discreet and sporty) but even at its best it sounds muted and lacks the evocative tone of a V8 or six-cylinder engine. 

Another disappointment is the transmission calibration, with the gearbox awkwardly shifting out of first gear on multiple occasions during our test drive.

In the taller gears it felt smooth enough cruising along, but given its low speed shifts we’d like to spend more time in the urban environment before passing final judgement. 

The other notable element of the driving experience we struggled with was the ride quality. While fine on the smoother motorways, our test drive included time on some patchy country back roads and the C 43, even in the ‘Comfort’ suspension setting, was simply too firm.

Riding on low profile tyres, the adaptive dampers struggled to isolate the cabin from the imperfections in the road, leading to a fussy ride at times.

Overall the C 43 is a good car, but it feels like there are still some areas where Mercedes could improve it to make it really live up to the AMG badge.

Very occasionally, one drives a car that makes the human body feel inadequate to the task. I would have worried that I’m getting old, that my body is simply too flubby and my brain too broken, to cope with the kind of wild acceleration and brutal g-forces the Model 3 Performance delivers.

But, fortunately, I had a videographer in the passenger seat, a much younger man who loves fast cars, and he kept threatening to vomit when I drove it hard, too. 

I’ve driven quite a few cars that you can use make your passenger sick, or hurt their necks - one obvious competitor in the shape of a Porsche Taycan Turbo S comes to mind - but it’s very rare that a vehicle is so intense it can make you, the driver, feel bilious.

Yes, you do bring this on yourself, by choosing to push this Performance anywhere near its limits through particularly sharp and intestine-shaped roads like the canyons outside Malibu Tesla chose to launch it on. 

On longer, sweeping bends it was far more of a joy, and less physically punishing, but in the tight stuff it often felt like corners were being thrown at you, as if you were driving behind the Millennium Falcon and being pulled along in its wake.

The brakes, special new sporting ones with track-ready pads, were up to the task, even though it often felt like they couldn’t possibly pull you up from the speeds you were doing.

And yes, it was entirely my fault that the very first time I even gently prodded the throttle and it launched me ahead past a California Highway Patrol officer, that was my fault too. Three minutes into the drive, holding an American fine, I had already deduced that perhaps this car was too fast for my own good.

But lots of EVs are fast in a straight line, you’re really comparing the length and depth of your “oooophhh” sounds at this point, but where this one succeeds is by being a lot better in the handling and ride and cornering departments than most.

Tesla’s stated goal with this car was to move beyond straight-line speed, to become more than a one-trick pony, and to do that it’s given the Performance a stiffer structure overall and updated the springs and stabiliser bars. 

Aerodynamic changes have reduced drag by five per cent, delivered a 36 per cent lift reduction, and a 55 per cent improvement in front-to-rear lift balance.

Tesla’s own, in-house version of adaptive dampers, not an option but included in every Performance, work with the car’s 'Vehicle Dynamics Controller' through its various modes - 'Insane' and 'Track' being the most… ludicrous - to immediately respond to driver inputs. 

The Performance rides well on LA’s awful concrete freeways but feels absolutely nailed down when you attack even a bumpy driver’s road.

This version also has a lot more power going to the rear wheels, to help it feel more sports-car playful and to fire out of bends the way an enthusiast’s car should. And make no mistake, I met them, the people behind this car are serious driving enthusiasts (although they demur, slightly, on whether their boss is one).

Track mode will allow some serious adjustability, drifting ability and fun, so the kind of people who want to hurl around a racing circuit in silence will love it.

Perhaps the only let downs are that it still feels a bit austere inside, just not very special, and that the steering is just a bit digital, soft and uninvolving, compared to the cars they clearly benchmarked against - BMWs and Porsches. 

Tesla provided no information about safety for the Performance Model but it is assumed it will be unchanged from a standard Model 3.

Aside from Autopilot that means auto emergency braking, lane keep aids, and instead of blind-spot monitoring, it gets the surround radar view and blind-spot cameras when you indicate.

The latest Model 3 has an additional centre airbag for a total of seven, as well as additional bolstering where the doors meet the body in response to requirements in its American home market.

It should be able to carry its maximum five-star ANCAP safety rating, which the original version achieved in 2019.

The C 43 is covered by Mercedes’ five-year, unlimited kilometre warranty, which has become the new standard for the luxury car market.

Service intervals for the car are at 12 months/25,000km, which is on par with industry standard.

Mercedes-Benz Australia will offer a service plan for the C 43, prices were yet to be confirmed at the time of publication but the company has indicated it will be similar to the C300. 

That means $550 for year one, $900 for year two, the third service costs $1000 and the fourth year service costs $2450 - for a total of $4900 for the first four years of ownership.

Again, we've been asked to assume the Performance will come with Tesla's standard four-year/80,000km warranty and roadside assistance. And that the battery and drive unit will fall under an eight-year/192,000km warranty, whichever comes first.

Tesla says it monitors its cars to ascertain when they need servicing, and so it is based on a case-by-case situation. Every 12 months/20,000km is recommended for a general check-up, and includes tyre rotation.

Wiper blades, brake fluid and cabin air filters need replacement every two years while the air-con service is every six years.

Of course, there are no oil changes, filters or spark plugs to replace, and even brake pad wear is less than on an ICE vehicle because of the regenerative braking system. Although it will likely be higher in the Performance variant.